In this edition of Meet the Staff, learn more about Ben Weinstein and his journey through the Newberry to his current role as a Project Archivist.
What was your first encounter the Newberry, and how did it lead to your joining the staff?
I first heard of the Newberry when I was in college in Portland, Oregon, through my English professor and thesis advisor. She’s a native Chicagoan, and she asked if I had heard of the Newberry Library since they held a lot of materials related to British Modernism and specifically Virginia Woolf and James Joyce's Ulysses. She encouraged me to check out the Newberry the next time I was in town, so that put it on my radar. Then in 2022, I was working at another library in the Chicagoland area, and I wanted a change, and the Newberry came to mind. Obviously, my professor, but others as well, had spoken about the Newberry in such a glowing manner; I applied, and that’s how I became a Library Assistant.
Working as a Library Assistant was a great way to be properly introduced to the Newberry, because you are working at the desk, engaging with anyone who comes in the reading rooms, and delivering materials throughout the building. Meeting other staff, fellows, scholars and community members is kind of baked into the position and allowed me to quickly get my bearings. You are truly in the thick of it: between paging materials and working the desk, you have a good sense of what’s going on and what items people are interested in, and you get to know the collection pretty well too, which is exciting.
What is your position now and what is the day to day?
My current position is as Project Archivist on the Modern Manuscripts and Archives Team. This role allowed me to shift focus a bit and now I get to work on things that I’m more closely interested in. My role was created through a bequest for someone to work through the journalism- related items in the collection. The Newberry has a backlog of collections that we’ve acquired through various means but are not processed. As my position is term-limited, the goal of my position is to just process as much as possible in the three-year time span I’m allotted.
The day to day is a lot of processing our more recently acquired journalism-related collections, such as the Ellen Warren Papers or the Chicago Headline Club records. So, this means, I’m primarily organizing. These collections often exist in somewhat jumbled and chaotic boxes of materials, whether they’re text, images, or miscellaneous artifacts. Going through the boxes and trying to figure out an order that accurately reflects processes and work of the journalists themselves, as will benefit researchers in terms of how they locate the materials. I also create online finding aids and add metadata so researchers can actually be led to find the materials we are processing
How did you first become interested in the archival world?
Two things happened at once which made me interested in the archival world. Working at the Newberry as a library assistant and getting second-hand experience with the archival collections in the library. Paging items, exploring our catalog and talking to co-workers allowed me to get a sense of what archival materials exist at the Newberry.
Also, I’m currently in a graduate MLIS program. When I was trying to figure out what I wanted my concentration to be, I felt myself naturally wanting to explore the world of archives. I started taking more archives focused classes. So, those two things happened in tandem when I got this project archivist position and then my schoolwork started becoming much more archives focused, and that made me interested in pursuing a career in it. I really enjoy the processes of organizing and describing material. It's a fun challenge that forces you to be thinking both about the creators and the history of the materials. You also get this neat access to the needs of researchers and other users. It’s all very fun and intellectual and can be a fun challenge.
What project have you found most interesting to work on?
The first project that comes to mind is the Marcia Danits papers, which is a collection of courtroom sketches. I spent a lot of my first year working in it; because it’s so vast, it ended up being over 13,000 images that I went through. For most of them, I was doing some kind of in-depth research in terms of the people involved (defendants, prosecutors, judges, what have you).
Prior to processing that collection, I had not given a ton of thought to courtroom sketch art as a medium or as a process. Going through all the images was a cool way to get really deep into that world, at least through the lens of one artist.
Do you have a favorite item in the Newberry collection?
I don’t know if I would call this my favorite, but a very fun one that has been in my purview recently, and ties into the Mike Royko Exhibition, is that I’m currently processing the papers of Ellen Warren, who is a longtime Chicago journalist. One of the few non-text materials in the collection is a rubber chicken which I’m still determining the exact origin of.
There’s a photo of Mike Royko with several of his “leg creatures” – folks who assisted him with gathering information. Ellen Warren was the first non-male assistant. Prior to that, they were called “leg men,” so rather than calling herself a “leg woman” they started using the term “leg creatures.” There’s a picture with Royko and all his assistants, and there is a rubber chicken in that photo. We don’t know if it’s the same rubber chicken, and Ellen Warren herself paid us a visit, and we couldn’t come to a conclusive answer, but it’s a fun tie-in nonetheless.
This story is part of the Newberry’s Donor Digest, Fall 2024. In this newsletter, we share with donors exciting stories of the work made possible by their generosity. Learn more about supporting the library and its programs.