Between the two of them, Jo Ellen McKillop Dickie and Matt Rutherford have been at the Newberry for over half a century. As, respectively, the Reference Services Librarian/Selector for Reference and the Curator of Genealogy and Local History, Jo Ellen and Matt know the Newberry inside and out, and whether you’ve visited our reading rooms once or dozens of times, you’ve likely benefited from their vast expertise and deep knowledge of the Newberry’s collections. We’re proud to highlight their work and have them share more about what brought them to the library and what makes the Newberry so unique.
Tell us about your roles – what does the day-to-day look like, as well as some of your ongoing projects and responsibilities?
Matt: As Curator of Genealogy and Local History, I have two main responsibilities here. The first is overseeing our reference assistance to genealogists and local historians. That involves shifts at the reference desk in the second floor reading room; training new staff and getting them up to speed on genealogy methodology; planning and delivering the bimonthly Genealogy 101 sessions on Saturday mornings; and engaging in professional development to make sure that I am up to date on the field and its latest best practices. So that's the one hat I wear.
The other hat is as curator. I'm responsible for collection development in the areas of genealogy and local history. I attend meetings along with Jo Ellen and the Newberry’s many other curators and selectors where we collaborate on items that we want to bring into the collection. We hold these conversations as one large collaborative team, though we each have a specialty area and our own itemized modest budgets with which to acquire materials.
In my area in particular, we receive a fairly significant quantity of donated materials. A lot of my time is spent basically brokering and facilitating those sorts of donations. Some of them are random and unexpected, but a lot of them arrive as a result of my outreach efforts.
Jo Ellen: For the first of my two roles, I'm the Reference Services Librarian. I manage the main reference email inbox and distribute inquiries to relevant staff members, including Matt. I staff the reference desks throughout the week and serve as one of the leaders of our bimonthly Newberry 101 program. I respond to reference requests from the public and assist Fellows and Scholars in Residence with any of their reference needs. If they require books or articles via interlibrary loan, I also place those requests for them. I provide library orientations for new fellows, who arrive throughout the academic year.
As the Selector for Reference, I also serve as a member of the Collection Development Steering Committee. I purchase sources for the reference collections, as well as secondary sources that support the 11 core collections. I’ve been focusing on materials supporting Modern Manuscripts lately, since funding can be scarcer for secondary sources that augment those collections. Some of the reference materials I acquire are also technically compendiums of primary sources that are prohibitively expensive to have the originals of in the collection, or so scarce, or fragile; facsimiles allow these materials to functionally appear in the collection as well. Compared to the rest of the selectors, Matt and I select a higher proportion of secondary sources.
What led you both to librarianship, and to your particular disciplines?
Matt: I started off my working life in IT, and after a couple of decades of that, decided I wanted to work with the consumers, rather than the gatekeepers, of information. So, I was a mid-life career changer. I briefly considered teaching and social work as professions, but the librarians I spoke with were far and away the happiest in their careers!
Librarianship suits me perfectly. I've always read and loved books and enjoyed research and studying... all of that is right up my alley. After library school, I was lucky enough to find a position here. I started off as a Genealogy Reference Librarian, and then about 15 years ago, I became the curator.
Jo Ellen: I have an art history degree; I studied pre-Columbian art and took several museum studies classes; I always wanted to work in a museum. I worked at the Field Museum in the Education department for several years. When I left there, I went to the Donors Forum Library, a philanthropic library in the city. I worked there for a couple of years as a reference assistant.
A friend of mine from the Field Museum worked in Special Collections at the Newberry and let me know that there was an available position in the reading rooms. When I started, I didn't have my library degree yet, but when I was working in Special Collections, I received my Master’s in Library Science. I thought the Newberry was a great fit for me because I enjoy working with objects; it reminded me of my earlier years at the Field Museum. The Newberry is really a hybrid museum/library, where you can touch the materials.
How long have you both been working at the Newberry?
Jo Ellen: 29 years for me.
Matt: 21 years. Together for us, Jo Ellen, it's, oh my gosh, more than a half a century!
What you look for when you’re curating items for the collection?
Matt: Diversity is important, and I think we take our mission fairly seriously here about collecting, preserving, and making available a wide range of perspectives on history. Our explicit intent for the last five or six years has been to move away from solely collecting for a Eurocentric, predominantly white and colonialist perspective. Those stories are already well-represented in the collection. Having materials that reflect and record the experience of multitudes of people is critically important to telling the whole human story. That's on the big scale.
On sort of a more microlevel day to day, like when I'm working with genealogists, it makes a big difference if we hold reference and research material that can speak to a wide variety of family histories.
In the 1970s with the advent of the first Roots miniseries, the “Alex Haley phenomenon,” if you will, Newberry Genealogy for the first time recognized that African-American materials were scarce in the collection, and we needed to meet the needs of a new cohort of researchers. African American family history is an area in which we’ve been able to maintain our strong collecting focus. In more recent years, we have expanded our reach to Hispanic materials, and we’re looking to expand more broadly.
I think it comes down to capturing and preserving history, and then serving the researchers who come in to use our genealogical materials so that they can find their own stories. Just in the last couple of years, we’ve maintained a strong focus on 20th century Chicago, particularly African-American history. I've been able to find and bring in a few LGBTQIA+ pieces as well. Those are some particular strengths.
Jo Ellen: When I started at the Newberry, I thought of our collections ending at about World War II or shortly after. Since then, there has been a significant push forward. I've been collecting reference and secondary materials and focusing on those voices that have been marginalized and points of views not currently reflected in the collection.
As the Selector for Reference, which I’ve been for 13 years now, I’m looking to fill gaps in our collections, focusing on African-American material post-1960s and LGBTQIA+ reference sources. I pay close attention to the reference requests that come in, especially ones that inquire about topics that are unfamiliar to me. I recently had someone looking for a railroader who was part of the Bracero Railroad Program. I found a variety of different works and Web resources on that program, which brought Mexican railroaders to America starting in 1942. Although we didn't hold the records this person needed, I located resources for them to pursue, as well as materials I wanted to add to our collections to assist other researchers. We really gain so much knowledge from our readers.
What are a few challenges that you encounter when finding items for the collection?
Jo Ellen: It’s funding. We have modest purchasing budgets. There are never enough funds to purchase all the materials we would like to acquire, especially electronic resources. There are several reference works and electronic resources that I would love to add to the collection, but they are cost prohibitive, unfortunately.
Matt: One of my challenges is just keeping up with the literature, particularly on the genealogy side. Rather than having a few expensive items that grab eyeballs, there's a lot of lower-priced items. I tend to have a quantity challenge with just keeping up with everything that's happening. I mean, if you think of all the genealogy societies in the country—there are thousands, all doing their own publications. We want to get as many of those as we can.
Can you share a few particularly exciting recent acquisitions?
Matt: I’ll highlight two in particular. One is the records of The Women’s Auxiliary of the Nations Colored Dentist Association. Formed in Chicago in the 1930s, this group was started by and for wives of African American dentists in Chicago. As the years passed, the women's auxiliary grew into a well-to-do and active philanthropic organization of the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Not only does the collection contain their constitution and bylaws, it also holds a trove of photographs of these women from throughout the organization's sixty-plus year history. I was really happy to bring this collection in because it represents both women and people of color, two areas in which archival holdings have been historically underrepresented.
The other is the Martin-Dooley Scrapbook. This is a personal scrapbook kept by an interracial gay male couple, Kenneth A. Martin and John M. Dooley, in Chicago from about 1984 until 1991, when Martin passed away due to AIDS complications. It was created as their personal scrapbook, the record of their relationship, a testimony to their activities, their travels, and the love they shared for each other. They even held a marriage ceremony of sorts in the mid-eighties, obviously long before it was legal. It's truly this beautiful, one-of-a-kind object. I like it for its LGBTQIA+ and contemporary representation. I always love to collect for Chicago and the Midwest in particular, and both this and the Women’s Auxiliary fit that criterion.
Jo Ellen: I’ll highlight Blacks in Blackface: A Sourcebook on Early Black Musical Shows, a two-volume reference work. It was the first resource of its kind to cover all manner of African-American performers from 1900 to 1940, from musical theatre to vaudeville to the circus. Its compiler, Henry T. Sampson, worked meticulously to collect clippings, reviews, and articles from various news sources highlighting black performers, theater troupes, circus performers and musicians, you name it, all of which is otherwise very hard to find. This work has been a true gem, and I have my eye on more works by Sampson; he’s also written encyclopedias covering Black Americans in film, TV, radio, and more. This work is a great example of one resource leading me to another. It’s also an example of a compendium to primary sources, the type of reference work that I mentioned earlier that I like to acquire.
I also recently purchased Chicago Muslims and the Transformation of American Islam, in connection to the Beyond Belief project, which has of course inspired me to acquire more works related to religion in Chicago, especially underrepresented faiths. I always pay attention not just to what researchers inquire about, but also upcoming exhibitions, public programs, and adult education classes, so that visitors can follow their curiosity from our programming back into the collection itself.
What do you like best about working at the Newberry? Do you have any favorite moments you’d like to share?
Matt: I've been lucky to just have so many magical moments. For me, I can't isolate just a single experience, but my favorite part of my job is working with somebody who is brand new to genealogy, and who, as a result of starting at the Newberry, grows quickly in excitement and enthusiasm. I get to be the one to introduce them to this fun new world of research and personal history. Seeing them really delight in finding their family or ancestors in records for the first time, it always gives me a thrill.
What I love about the Newberry itself—it's the people and the books, the staff and the collections. In my 21 years, I've always had warm, supportive, intelligent, and collaborative colleagues, and I really appreciate that. The collections, I mean, those speak for themselves almost. I mean, they're amazing.
And it’s not just the colleagues; it's also the readers who come in. By and large, the folks who come in are happy to be here. They want to be here and they're really eager to get to work. I know not every library has that. Not every library has patrons and readers who are, I think, as special as ours.
Jo Ellen: Our readers, the staff, and the collection. I always say libraries are the great equalizer; I believe in that and in the Newberry's philosophy and mission. We have many visitors who are not what you would consider the traditional library user. Maybe it’s somebody who is working in construction down the block, or people who haven't been here since they were students.
It's great working here and connecting people to the collections. When I started as a Library Assistant, I had the opportunity to work with Tony Burroughs from the Center for Black Genealogy. He would bring in his classes, and I would provide collection presentations on searching for Porter records in the Pullman Company Archives. This is when I first experienced how our readers can take what may appear to the average person as “just a piece of paper”—the employee time cards, for example—and it becomes a tangible and personal connection to their past, and I love that!
This story is part of the Newberry’s Donor Digest, Spring 2025. 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.