Newberry staff pilot a new approach to organizing the library’s enormous collection of road maps and travel ephemera, applying archival methods that could eventually scale up to make 230,000 items more accessible to researchers.

Now anyone with an Internet connection can access over 200,000 high-resolution images documenting early contact between colonial forces and Indigenous peoples, the expanding boundaries of the United States, and the imaginary construction of “the West.”

On April 23, the Newberry presented the 2018 Newberry Library Award to Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. In accepting the award, Dr. Hayden underscored the similarities among the Library of Congress, the Newberry, and libraries everywhere: “The library is an embodiment of the American ideal of a knowledge-based democracy.”

In the 18th century, botany was both a wholesome domestic activity and a transgressive field of study about plant sexual reproduction. Newberry fellow Katie Sagal discusses how women writers navigated this perilous terrain to expand their roles in scientific and literary communities.