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
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 and summer intern Amy Sparks discuss an original traffic controller switch, c. 1926, from Chicago’s Loop. The city used this More
Get to know Raymond Hudd and the contents of his photographs and papers in this blog post by collections intern Analú M. López, a practicum student in archives this spring. The Chicago-based milliner Raymond Hudd (1924–2011) was well known for his bold, whimsical hat designs and was often referred to as the “Mad Hatter of More
CHM collections volunteer Robert Blythe details the history and contents of the Grand Army of the Republic, Department of Illinois records in our Research Center. During the Civil War, some 2.7 million men served in Union blue from 1861 to 1865. To preserve their bonds of comradeship and ensure that veterans and their families received More
Between now and November 11, 2018, we will commemorate the centennial of the United States’ participation in World War I. It was one of the greatest conflicts in human history, claiming more than 17 million lives and leaving more than 20 million wounded. The Great War, as it was called, shattered the illusions of an More
Collections volunteer Robert Blythe details the history and contents of the Illinois Women’s Agenda records in our Research Center. The records of the Illinois Women’s Agenda (IWA) shed light on the many and varied activities that characterized second-wave feminism in America in the 1970s and 1980s. Established in December 1975, the IWA was a coalition More