The Newberry Library in Collaboration with
Other Libraries and Educational Institutions

Now that you have toured the Newberry Library and gotten an overview of its history and collections, I will focus on our morning's topic — collaboration of a specialized library with other libraries and organizations.

The Newberry Library's collaboration with other institutions has its roots in the early history of the library. The first librarian, William Frederick Poole, had been librarian of the Chicago Public Library; the Newberry became a public reference library in counterpoint to that circulating library. When the John Crerar Library was founded in 1890, an agreement among the Newberry, the Chicago Public Library and the Crerar Library established areas of collecting responsibility, with the Newberry taking the lead in humanities and history, the Crerar in science and technology, and the Chicago Public Library in business, social sciences and patent literature. During the first years of the 20th Century Newberry catalogers were active on Library of Congress committees developing the LC classification system, which grew out of the Cutter system adopted by the Newberry.

Since those beginnings, there have always been formal and informal patterns of cooperation across a range of activities. Today, I will enumerate these patterns as they occur in collection development, cataloging and bibliography, scholarly publication, exhibits and public programs generally, exchange of professional expertise and information, formal academic programs, fellowship programs and reciprocal borrowing.

In the area of collection development there have been transfers of materials among institutions. For example, the transfer of scientific and medical materials when the Crerar was founded, the transfer of a circulating music collection to the Evanston Public Library in the 1960s, the transfer of foundation information to the Donors Forum Library, transfer of archival materials to other manuscript repositories, such as the University of Chicago and the Chicago Historical Society.

In recent years, beginning when Mundelein College — formerly a small Catholic liberal arts college for women — was absorbed by Loyola University, the Newberry Library has inherited or purchased several rare book collections from institutions that have changed their focus and academic curricula. The Mundelein College Collection is rich in Irish and German Catholic sources, with strong English and Scottish holdings as well. The Passionist Brothers collection brought together strong Italian and French holdings from this Italian monastic order. Holdings from the Divine Word community in Techny are strong in German. And lastly, the Concordia University Library in Oak Park library brought us Lutheran German protestant material. These collections are cataloged so they may be identified by library of origin. Study of these collections will enrich our picture of the ethnicity of this urban area.

Although it does not operate within the context of elaborate or binding cooperative collection development agreements, the Newberry makes a practice of making antiquarian purchases, deacessioning and serials subscription decisions in consultation with the catalogs and staff of Chicago area research libraries. It makes a commitment to continuing subscriptions to specialized periodicals when it is the only holding institution.

The Newberry Library's current collection focus is on acquiring primary manuscript and print sources. It continues to build research strength in secondary sources for the Renaissance, for the history of printing, for the history of the American Indian. Its mission to support primary research in the humanities makes it a rare book library for a region with many colleges and universities.

An exciting new approach to collection development collaboration is the joint purchase of antiquarian materials. In this program the Newberry Library and an academic library go together to buy items they both need and cannot afford on their own, often by

*Mary Wyly, Associate Librarian of the Newberry Library, Chicago. Presentation for DePaul University Libraries Program for Librarians from Brazil, April 1,1998.

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raising funds from foundations or individuals. Partners have been Notre Dame University, the University of Western Michigan, the University of Illinois and Spertus College. The Newberry holds "majority" ownership or 60 percent, the items normally reside here. The items can be lent to the rare book rooms of the co-owners for class and scholarly use. Notre Dame and the University of Illinois currently have manuscripts in their possession. The music manuscript you saw this morning was selected after consultation among specialists from Northwestern, Notre Dame and the University of Western Michigan. The music has been performed by a Notre Dame group at University of Western Michigan, carrying on circles of collaboration and increasing knowledge.

Collaboration in bibliographical control is a hallmark of librarianship in the United States with our many union catalog efforts, checklists and bibliographic utilities. The Newberry Library has been an active partner in these efforts starting with systematically reporting its holdings to the Library of Congress and the National Union Catalog. Its early printed books are recorded in bibliographies such as Frederick Rich Goff's continuing census of books before 1500. In the 1980s the library took the lead in compiling a union catalog of maps of the middle west. Ultimately, this 14-volume checklist brought together records for the holdings of pre-1901 maps from 141 libraries. Since 1977, the Newberry Library has used OCLC for cataloging, basing that decision on its desire to promote access to the collections.

As a collection rich in primary sources with a scholarly curatorial staff, it is natural for the Newberry to be involved in collaborative publication projects. I'll tell you about two examples. The Atlas of Early American History, published in 1976, was a collaborative effort of the Newberry Library and the Institute of Early American History and Culture of the University of Virginia. The critical edition of the works of Herman Melville, begun in the 1960s, was done by the Newberry and Northwestern University. Northwestern scholars and Newberry bibliographers worked together to assemble all the printed editions of Melville as well as all the printed criticism and dissertations on this great writer. The editorial effort resulted in fifteen volumes in 1989, and has left the library with the definitive print collection of this great author of Moby Dick.

Exhibits and public programs within any library require collaboration among diverse staff. To take full advantage of its own collection riches, the Newberry has turned to other institutions in developing exhibits and programs. One example is Renaissance Dante in Print, done with Notre Dame University, now also available on the Internet. For an exhibit from Mexico, the Newberry turned to the Chicago Public Library as a partner in reaching out to the Mexican community. The Theatre of the World: Golden Age of the Atlas in the Low Countries was a marvelous exhibit curated by a class of graduate students from Northwestern University. Last year's exhibit, the Hebrew Renaissance, showing an unknown treasure trove of Jewish and Christian Hebrew manuscripts, resulted from a collaboration with the Spertus College of Judaica.

A major partner in our exhibits program has been the American Library Association. Together, we have created panel versions of an exhibit on the legend of King Arthur and another on the Frontier in American Culture. These panels, to which libraries can add their own books, have traveled to more than one hundred libraries nationwide. At last count, the Arthur show had been seen by 2.5 million people. This kind of effort brings historical knowledge and interpretation developed in the academy to the general public.

The Newberry Library's Director of Public Programs views libraries as primary partners for developing programs and reaching new audiences. She seeks out opportunities to work with neighborhood branches, academic libraries, national library associations and the Library of Congress.

A specialized library grows from the minds of its curators and librarians, and although the historical record contains many examples of how our librarians have shared expertise in the past, I'll just give you recent examples. Newberry research staff teach at local universities in history and literature departments. Newberry librarians teach at our local library school, Dominican University, courses in humanities reference, rare book cataloging and library preservation. It also is important to note that by sending its conservator, Paul Banks, to Florence after the 1966 flood there, the Newberry contributed to the development of library preservation, with several of its pioneers founding the Columbia Texas program.

I mentioned the research centers on our tour. They are built on special strengths in the collections — the Cartography Center founded in 1971, the Center for the History of the American Indian Founded in 1972, the Family and Community History Center founded in 1973, and the Center for Renaissance Studies founded in 1979. All four centers bring together scholars working across disciplines of the humanities. I will focus today on the Center for Renaissance Studies for it is a model of participation and collaboration.

The Center for Renaissance Studies sustains the Newberry Library's long tradition of support for Renaissance scholarship, including sponsorship of an annual Renaissance Conference (now in its 36th year) and publication of Renaissance Drama. The Renaissance Center is co-sponsored by a consortium of more

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than 30 major Midwestern universities. Scholars from consortium institutions participate in specialized seminars during the academic year. Each summer the Center offers institutes in archival studies — one year on French sources, the next on Italian, then British, then Iberian on a rotating basis. Consortium members include DePaul, Indiana, Loyola, Marquette, Michigan State, Northwestern, Ohio State, Vanderbilt, Washingon, Western Michigan and York Universities, and the universities of Chicago, Illinois at Chicago, Illinois at Urbana, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, Wisconsin at Madison, and Wisconsin at Milwaukee. Students and faculty from these institutions rely on the Newberry Library as an actively growing collection of unique materials and as a resource for training in the disciplines of the humanities. Additionally the Newberry's reciprocal relation with the Folger Shakespeare Library extends the same welcome to the Folger consortium's 30 university members.

The library's oldest collaborative educational program is an undergraduate seminar established in 1964 by the Associated Colleges of the Midwest and later joined by the Great Lakes College Association. These are consortia of liberal arts colleges across the center of the country that collaborate on programs in various cities in this country and abroad: London and Florence semesters, urban studies semesters, Latin American field trips, etc. in addition to this program. The group of colleges includes Colorado, Grinnell, Carleton, Denison and Oberlin.

In this undergraduate program, faculty advisors from the colleges work with Newberry librarians and research staff to develop courses accredited by the member colleges. There are short-term courses in the winter, and every fall two instructors lead 18-25 students in an intensive course of study using common readings around a theme followed by individual selection and analysis of manuscripts and early printed sources, which are then used by each student to write a major paper. The course carries a full semester's credit. Recent topics have been landscape and culture, revolution and human conflict. Next year, students will study social and historical constructions of gender identity. Alumni of these ACM-GLCA seminars have gone on to join the academic, library and museum professional as well as other fields.

Just last year, this program was used as a model for a new undergraduate seminar sponsored by the Newberry Library and four Chicago institutions: Loyola University, Roosevelt University, the University of Illinois at Chicago and DePaul University. We are especially pleased with this collaboration because it brings this great library's resources to the attention of a group of students who live in Chicago and are likely to remain here, and we hope they will be users and supporters of the library!

The last area I want to detail for you is our fellowship program. The Newberry Library is the home base of one of the largest library-based fellowship programs in the United States. Fellows come from throughout the country and from abroad for periods of residence ranging from two weeks to 11 months in the year. Support for these fellowships comes from endowment funds and grants from foundations, individuals and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Newberry co-sponsors fellowships with the American Antiquarian Society, the British Academy, Ecole des Chartes in Paris and the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbiittel.

The Newberry Library awards about 50 fellowships a year in all categories. Competition for these fellowships is keen, with applications in all categories numbering 250 to 300 each year. An awards committee made up of staff scholars and local faculty, with the aid of a national panel for long-term awards, weighs the merits of proposals. Winning applicants are productive scholars who make effective use of the collections. Long-term and short-term fellows build major work on the research they do at the library. To track all of the resulting scholarly work would be impossible; however, since 1975, the Newberry Library has maintained a record of work growing out of the NEH fellowship program. At latest count, the record included 308 articles and 72 books.

Our fellows and other readers are attracted to the Newberry Library because of great collection strengths in primary sources for the history of Europe and the Americas. In order to sustain growth in its areas of strength, the library focuses on buying primary sources. To meet the needs of resident scholars for secondary materials, it has sought out the support of area academic institutions. Understanding that the Newberry supplies the need of many local scholars for unique research materials and also provides specialized services and research facilities, many libraries have agreed to provide borrowing privileges for between 10 and 20 fellows each year. We have such agreements with five university libraries, and among the most generous is our sponsor today, DePaul University.

Looking over the vast sweep of this library's history I can see a long period of building great collections — a process which continues — and beginning in mid-20th Century an emphasis on developing services for higher education and building centers for research and funds for sponsored research. The internal environment of the Newberry Library is one of intensive collaboration among librarians and scholars. It is from this strong base that the most exciting possibilities for

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collaboration with other institutions arise. We have come to know that as librarians and scholars we are different — scholars tend to be competitive and territorial, to risk a bald generalization, whereas librarians are natural at sharing and collaboration. I think that the success of our collaboration with academic and public partners is built on the daily need and effort of negotiating our mission employing diverse methodologies, intellectual strengths and working styles. Successful collaboration begins, like charity, at home.

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