CHM cataloging and metadata librarian Gretchen Neidhardt explains how the Museum is undertaking the monumental task of digitizing the last of its paper card catalog for 6,000 small manuscript collections. The Chicago History Museum is excited to utilize an IMLS Museums for America grant to fund the digitization of our final batch of manuscript collection More
To kick off Monday Night Nitrates, our new weekly photograph series, M. Alison Eisendrath, CHM’s Andrew W. Mellon Director of Collections, describes the effort to assess, preserve, and digitize our collection of approximately 35,000 nitrate negatives. In 1889, the Eastman Kodak Company introduced the first commercially available cellulose nitrate film as an alternative to the more More
Inside the Collection is a video series that invites you into the Chicago History Museum’s storage spaces to explore unusual, interesting artifacts from our vast collection. In this installment, senior collection manager Britta Keller Arendt discusses three artifacts related to Elmer Ellsworth, a law clerk to Abraham Lincoln who became a martyr at the onset More
Project archivist Adam Melville worked with CHM archivist Julie Wroblewski as part of his graduate school practicum. In this blog post, he describes how he processed one of our largest acquisitions in recent history. This summer, I received the exciting but daunting opportunity to process the papers of US congressman Sidney R. Yates—a 262-linear-foot collection More
Get to know Chicago cultural maven Lois Weisberg with the contents of her collection in our Research Center. Small only in stature, Lois Weisberg was a big presence in Chicago’s civic and cultural life for seven decades. Everything about her seemed larger than life, including a circle of friends that ran the gamut from comedian More