Research Centers

D'Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian History

• Mission: To encourage the use of the Newberry collections on American Indian history; improve the quality of what is written about American Indians; educate teachers about American Indian culture, history, and literature; assist American Indian tribal historians in their research; and provide a meeting ground where scholars, teachers, tribal historians, and others interested in American Indian studies can discuss their work with each other.
• Identity: The McNickle Center's affiliated research projects and long- and short-term fellows have played a major role in shaping modern scholarship on American Indian history.
• Founded: 1972
• Programs: The McNickle Center offers long- and short-term fellowships and summer institutes for teachers of American Indian history and American Indian literature and sponsors conferences, seminars, and workshops for scholars and teachers seeking more effective classroom integration of American Indian and American history.
• Publications: Bibliographies on American Indian history
• Newsletter: Meeting Ground, a national biannual newsletter

Dr. William M. Scholl Center for American History and Culture

• Mission: To promote innovative research and teaching through the use of the Newberry's rich collections in family and community history.
• Identity: The Newberry Library's maps, local histories, genealogical materials, publications of historical societies, and documentation of community life have helped the Scholl Center to evolve as the Midwest's center for genealogical research, regional history, and American social history.
• Founded: 1971
• Programs: The Scholl Center offers seminars on family and community history.
• Publications: The Scholl Center has published the Newberry Papers in Family and Community History since 1975. The series publishes research in new or neglected fields, methodological articles, and curricular materials.
• Projects: Atlas of Historical County Boundaries, The Encyclopedia of Chicago History
• Newsletter: Origins

Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography

• Mission: To advance knowledge of the history of cartography and to promote the effective use of the Newberry Library's cartographic collections in a variety of educational contexts.
• Identity: The Smith Center was formed with a generous endowment from Hermon Dunlap Smith, a distinguished collector of maps and travel books for Illinois and the Great Lakes region.
• Founded: 1972
• Programs: The Smith Center operates various programs in research and education, including scholarly conferences; lecture series and public programs; geography workshops for K-12 students in Chicago schools; summer institutes for university faculty; and exhibitions.
• Publications: The Smith Center publishes a series of occasional publications and exhibit catalogs.
• Newsletter: Mapline

Center for Renaissance Studies

• Mission: To integrate the resources of the Newberry Library's internationally renowned collections in the late medieval, Renaissance, and early modern periods into the educational process and to make available programs that are not feasible for institutions to mount alone.
  
• Identity: The Renaissance Center is organized as a consortium of 40 universities, which contribute to its administration and oversee the planning of programs through representatives on an executive committee.
• Founded: 1979
• Programs: The Renaissance Center offers a wide range of programs at the graduate and post-doctoral levels, including training in the techniques essential for primary research in these fields (paleography and codicology); interdisciplinary seminars; workshops; and conferences.