The Chicago Biography and Industry File is now online! This unique Newberry Library document is an index to sketches on over 15,000 people and industries that appeared in forty-eight collective biographies and industrial guides. It includes volumes such as Chicago & Its Distinguished Citizens and Manufacturing and Wholesale Industries of Chicago. All of these volumes were published between 1876 and 1937 and they are all held within the Newberry collections.

Additional links to the Chicago Biography and Industry File are available from our Genealogy Home Page and from the Tools Page on ChicagoAncestors.org.

Footnote.com has recently announced Footnote Pages. If you're not familiar with Footnote.com, its a website that combines historical documents with social networking. As one of several partner organizations working with the National Archives and Records Administration on digitization projects, they are moving swiftly to make government records accessible online.

The new Footnote Pages can be used to gather everything you know about a person, place or event. As a start, Footnote has created over 80 million pages based on data from the Social Security Death Index. After signing up for a free account you can add facts, stories, documents, photos or link a person to information already contained in Footnote. Pages also include timelines, maps, and other features. Looking for someone who's not in the Social Security Death Index? You can create new pages yourself.

While portions of Footnote.com are free, a subscription is necessary to see the premium content such as naturalization records, military records, newspapers and city directories. Full access to Footnote.com is available at the Newberry Library. 

The people from the website Forgotten Chicago are leading a tour of the south side on October 26. Visit the website for information about the tour. Here is a photographic account of their previous tour, of West Town.

The Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society of Chicago's annual conference will be held this Friday and Saturday, Oct. 10-11, at the Church of Latter-Day Saints, 5200 S. University, Chicago. Speakers inculde genealogist Deborah Abbott and Reginald Washington, an expert from the National Archives. For more details, visit the AAHGSC website.

Annette Gordon Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello will be speaking about the book on Thursday, October 2 at the Newberry. The lecture is free and starts at 6 p.m. More information is available here.

Sad news: yesterday a fire badly damaged the Chinese-American Museum of Chicago.

This notice is from the Cook County Clerk's website:

NOTICE: As of Tuesday, September 2, 2008, Cook County Vital Records is at a NEW LOCATION at:
The Daley Center
50 W. Washington, East Concourse Level
Chicago, IL 60602

Do you wish that the Newberry had the household censuses for your Swedish ancestral village? Or marriages from an Irish Catholic parish on the south side of Chicago? Or wills from Greene County, Mississippi?

Now there is a way to bring those sources here. The Newberry has long had a loan program with the renowned Family History Library (FHL) in Salt Lake City. Patrons can order microformat titles of interest for a small fee and have them sent to the Newberry. The FHL catalogue on www.familysearch.org lists thousands of titles concerning genealogical records from North America, South America, Europe, Africa, and Australia.

A new policy at the FHL allows the Newberry to keep...[more]