The Newberry Library is an independent research library, specializing in the humanities and located on Washington Square in Chicago, Illinois. It 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. The Library is named to honor the founding bequest from the estate of philanthropist Walter Loomis Newberry. 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, it welcomes researchers into the reading rooms who are at least 14 years old or in the ninth grade, and have a research topic corresponding to the nature of the collections. Additional public services are offered through exhibitions, meet-the-author lectures, adult education seminars, and other programming.
