Newberry Library Chicago

The Newberry Library is an independent research library, specializing in the humanities and located in Chicago, Illinois, that has been free and open to the public since 1887. Its collections encompass a variety of topics related to the history and cultural production of Western Europe and the Americas over the last six centuries. Core collection strengths support research in several subject areas, including maps, travel, and exploration; music from the Renaissance to the early twentieth century; early contact between Western colonizers and Indigenous peoples in the Western Hemisphere; the personal papers of twentieth-century American journalists; the history of printing; and genealogy and local history.

Although the Newberry is a noncirculating library, its materials are accessible to anyone who is at least 16 years old and has a research topic corresponding to the nature of the collections. Additional public services are offered through exhibitions, meet-the-author lectures, adult education seminars, fellowships, and other programming.

The library houses more than 1.5 million books, 5 million manuscript pages, and 500,000 historic maps. Collection strengths include materials on the European Renaissance, genealogy, Indigenous peoples of the Americas, early music, cartography, the history of printing, Chicago history, railroad archives, Luso-Brazilian history, and Midwestern authors' manuscripts.