The Newberry Library's Edward E. Ayer Collection
by Analú Lopez and Matt Rutherford
Today's Topic: The Newberry Library's Edward E. Ayer Collection
The Newberry Library's Ayer collection is arguably the world's premier source of primary documents regarding American Indians. Holding more than 100,000 digitized images, topics range from Native American archaeology, ethnology, art, and language to the history of contact between Europeans and native peoples: voyages, travels, and accounts of early America and development of cartography of the Western Hemisphere. Also covered is the history of the aboriginal peoples under the jurisdiction of the U.S. in the Philippine Islands and Hawaii.
Ayer librarian Analú Lopez will also speak to CAGGNI specifically about some recent collaborations the library has been doing with Indigenous communities.
About Analú Lopez
Analú María López (Guachichil/Xi'úi) is the Ayer Librarian and Assistant Curator of American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the Newberry Library. As the Ayer Librarian and Assistant Curator, she helps steward the Indigenous studies collection while guiding library users through, connecting them with, and interpreting materials linked to the Indigenous Studies collection. She is interested in uplifting historically underrepresented and marginalized Indigenous narratives dealing with identity, language, and decolonization. She is also passionate about intentional community collaborations for access to materials within colonial institutions, and the preservation, revitalization, and instruction of Indigenous languages. She holds a Master of Library and Information Sciences with a certificate in Archives and Cultural Heritage Resources and Services from Dominican University and a Bachelor of Arts in Photography with a minor in Latin-American Studies from Columbia College Chicago. Mrs. López began her career with the Newberry in 2004. After working for other libraries and museums in Chicago for 13 years, Mrs. López returned to the library in her current role in September 2017.
About Matt Rutherford
Matt Rutherford, MLIS, is Curator of Genealogy and Local History at the Newberry Library. In addition to managing the Newberry's renowned genealogy collection, Matt has also answered thousands of questions on a wide range of genealogy topics. He has spoken at the Illinois State Genealogical Society and the Conference on Illinois History, as well as several local genealogy societies, including the North Suburban Genealogical Society, the Elgin Genealogical Society, Genealogical Forum of Elmhurst, and the Illinois St. Andrew Society. In addition, Matt teaches seminars on a variety of genealogy topics, including beginning genealogy, researching at the Newberry Library, using respositories and archives, researching pre-fire Chicago, adoption searches, nonpopulation census schedules, and the history of the federal census. He is the co-author of A Bibliography of African American History at the Newberry Library (2005).
Presentation Style: Remote Hybrid. The presenters will be joining us remotely via Zoom from the Newberry Library. If you live in the Northern Illinois area, we have booked Palatine Library for this CAGGNI gathering. We encourage you to join us for the best experience.
Members, Please Note. This meeting will be followed by CAGGNI's Colonial SIG, which will work on what we might find in the collection to advance our own research. Please come with suggested look ups that will help advance our research.
