ArtDesign

All Access Pass

Chicago’s Newberry Library may have closed stacks, but they’ve got a new open access policy that’s already making history. Since February, every digital image of their collections is now available to everyone! From every collection they’ve got online to the photos you snap in their reading room, as long as the collection item is in the public domain, you’re good to go. There’s no licensing, no permission fees, open access means it’s all free.

What does that mean for you? Well, just about every single one of the 1.7 million images they’ve got online are now available to use without having to fill out any permission forms at all.  This change is intended to foster “life-long learning and civic engagement with the humanities” while allowing for easy and effective use of the Newberry’s collections.

How To Do Things

Want to make your own Westworld-esque broadsides while remaining historically accurate? Browse through the Graff collection for period-accurate language and typography! Need a little inspiration for your own revolutionary invectives? Check out this monstrous collection of French Revolution pamphlets! Looking for classroom resources? They’ve got ’em! Anything in the digital collection, they want you to make stuff with it. Scholarly research, creative endeavors, mix it up… the collections are meant to be used.

The Newberry’s updated open access policy also means that visitors can share photos they’ve taken of the collections themselves. Since I’m lucky enough to live nearby, I had the opportunity to do this myself just this past weekend! I went to an event with the Society for Typographic Arts that focused on calligraphy, lettering, and flourishes. Using my phone’s camera as a way of taking visual notes, I got some great images of fantastic flourishes that are literal centuries old.

Liber perutilis nunc primum editus continens Formulas Latinorum & Germanica[rum] scripturaru[m]. Basel, 1551.
Liber perutilis nunc primum editus continens Formulas Latinorum & Germanica[rum] scripturaru[m]. Basel, 1551. Newberry Library VAULT Wing Folio ZW 538 .H66
The young man's delight and his accomplishment.
The young man’s delight and his accomplishment. England, 1677?. Wing MS Folio ZW 645 .0643
Traite complet d'ecritures en tous genres et d'ornements moyen-age
Traite complet d’ecritures en tous genres et d’ornements moyen-age. St. Gallen, Switzerland, 1840. Newberry Library Wing Oversize ZW 838 .M583
Schriftenatlas eine Sammlung von Alphabete, Initialen und Monogrammen
Schriftenatlas eine Sammlung von Alphabete, Initialen und Monogrammen. Stuttgart, 1903-5. Newberry Library, Wing folio ZW 15 .677
Traite complet d'ecritures en tous genres et d'ornements moyen-age.
Traite complet d’ecritures en tous genres et d’ornements moyen-age. St. Gallen, Switzerland, 1840. Newberry Library Wing Oversize ZW 838 .M583
Schriftenatlas eine Sammlung von Alphabete, Initialen und Monogrammen
Schriftenatlas eine Sammlung von Alphabete, Initialen und Monogrammen. Stuttgart, 1903-5. Newberry Library, Wing folio ZW 15 .677
Hamilton Wood Type
Specimens of wood type, Hamilton Manufacturing Co. Two Rivers, WI, 1910. Newberry Library Wing Folio Z 40583 .3825
An Open Book

And, y’all, the Newberry Library is FREE. Anyone 14 and older can get a reader’s card and access anything in their collection. Maps, postcards, gilded and illuminated manuscripts, sheet music, tickets from the Columbian Exposition, and more extraordinary old books than you can shake a stick at!

Their hours aren’t the most convenient, but if you’re ever in Chicago with a need to pet the oldest books you’ve ever held, I can’t recommend it enough. The staff is friendly and eager to share their enthusiasm and knowledge with you, and you can browse the catalog ahead of time to maximize your time in the reading room. And really, there’s just something cool about paging through an illuminated Book of Hours once owned by a queen.

Seriously, go check out their digital collections. And maybe stop by whenever you’re in town.

Beth Voigt

Beth is a graphic designer in Chicago, a superhero in her own mind, and absolutely nothing on TV. She wrangles fonts professionally, pummels code amateurishly, and has been known to shove fire in her face for fun. Fond of volunteering, late-night bursts of productivity, and making snacks, she dislikes grocery shopping and sticky public transit and is only on her second smartphone. Her opinion is that you should try everything twice; if you don't like it, you were probably doing it wrong the first time around. If external links are your thing, here are links to Twitter and Instagram, and you can support her ongoing weirdness by buying her a coffee or six.

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