All Libraries News

Northwestern University Libraries are pleased to announce the winners of the 2026 Undergraduate Archival Research Project Prizes. The Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections and University Archives awards these prizes to undergraduate students who present a significant and well-researched analysis on a historical topic using primary sources.

Charles Deering McCormick University Librarian and Dean of Libraries Xuemao Wang will step down at the end of the 2026-27 academic year, Provost Kathleen Hagerty announced today. Wang has served in the role since 2022. Wang provided strategic vision and leadership during a time of transition as libraries around the world emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic and grappled with an evolution from traditional services and collections to increasingly digital hubs of knowledge and information.

Northwestern University Libraries is pleased to share that the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) Center for Library Programs has secured an Open Publishing Agreement with Wiley that provides open publishing opportunities for affiliated corresponding authors through December 31, 2027, while maintaining full read access to Wiley’s journal portfolio.

Northwestern signs new contract with Elsevier unbundling previous package to provide more flexibility for subscriptions.

Nina Metz interviews Head of the Transportation Library Rachel Cole for the Chicago Tribune on the art of 20th century government reports.

Northwestern University Libraries are a founding signatory, joining eleven other cultural heritage institutions, in establishing shared standards for evaluating AI training requests. The Statement of Shared Practice is a community-driven framework following six core principles, derived from the University of Virginia Archival AI Protocol and its central rule: No access without control.

Northwestern University Libraries were awarded a two-year, $500,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation to support the transformation of unique and extensive collection of environmental impact statements (EISs) into a dataset that can be explored through a digital exhibit platform and analyzed through a new AI agent framework pioneered at the University.

Northwestern University Libraries are pleased to share the winners of the 2026 Affordable Instructional Resources (AIR) Faculty Grants. These grants help instructors build free, openly licensed course materials that are tailored to their classrooms and can be shared more broadly with the academic community. 

Clara Drummond, director of the McCormick Library, walks through the Treasures of Deering exhibit currently in the lobby of Deering Library.

Upon retirement, libraries employee Vince McCoy looks back on more than 50 years as a part of the University community.

Ted Quiballo, instructional technologies librarian, has been named one of four winners of the annual Daniel I. Linzer Award for Faculty Excellence in Service

Recently completed renovations to Deering Library renew the landmark’s longtime status as a destination for students.

The Undergraduate Archival Research Project Prize comes with a $1,500 award for a paper written using primary source materials. It is the first of a series of similar prizes that will reward students for using the holdings of the Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections and University Archives.

A new Elsevier contract will bring changes to access for select titles included in Northwestern University Libraries' current subscription.

Dean of Libraries Xuemao Wang has appointed Clara Drummond as the Director of the Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections and University Archives, effective September 1, 2025. As the Director of the McCormick Library, Drummond will provide leadership and management to its forward-thinking special collections and archives program.

Northwestern Libraries and the Affordable Instructional Resources (AIR) are pleased to announce the 2025 awardees for the Open Educational Resources Faculty Grant. Funded by the Office of the Provost and University Libraries, these grants are intended to fund the work involved in finding, creating, using, and sharing OER as replacements for required commercial textbooks.

Northwestern Libraries now provides access to Sage Campus, a suite of online courses focused on research and data literacy skills. Sage Campus provides an accessible and flexible option to grow critical academic and research skills with 40 self-paced online mini-courses designed to supplement your existing coursework.

Northwestern Libraries now provides current faculty, students and staff direct access to The New York Times (NYT), including News, Audio, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter, and The Athletic. The subscription includes access to features directly through nytimes.com and through the NYT mobile apps.

Dean of Libraries Xuemao Wang has appointed Elsa Álvaro as the Associate University Librarian (AUL) for Collections and Access for the Northwestern University Libraries, effective October 1, 2024.  As the AUL for Collections & Access, Álvaro will articulate organization-wide strategies and implement solutions for the development of and access to all library collections.  This role also will lead librarians and staff across all operational areas of the organization to achieve strategic collections objectives. She will define and advance strategies to fulfill the information resource needs of the Northwestern community and pursue innovation, efficiency and cross-institutional collaboration in discovery and delivery of scholarly materials. She will take an active role in developing and maximizing cooperative relationships in the context of the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) and other consortia, as well as building partnerships with faculty across campus.

A National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services supports trailblazing work using generative AI to implement a chat search of the Northwestern Digital Collections, as well as to augment human-mediated metadata creation. The two-year grant also supports the creation of toolkits that will help other libraries and cultural institutions experiment and integrate this transformative technology into their discovery platforms.

Richardson’s appointment is a homecoming, as he graduated from the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences with majors in History and English, completed his M.A. in Liberal Studies through the School of Continuing (Professional) Studies, and began his early library career in the Preservation Department at Northwestern Libraries.

Deering Library, which has enchanted students, scholars, and visitors for more than 90 years, is slated for a major renovation that will markedly improve the facility while preserving its history. After years of planning, the renovation will begin in June, following commencement. The work will include the renovation of select prominent public spaces and upgrades to attendant infrastructure. There will be no public access to Deering Library during construction, which is expected to conclude in September 2025.

An exhibition of original art dedicated to the memory of American journalist James Foley opens April 3 at Northwestern University. In Inescapable Truths: James Foley’s Indelible Legacy, conceptual artist Bradley McCallum draws from Foley’s video, photos, and writings he filed while reporting on the Libyan and Syrian civil wars of 2011.

Northwestern students and faculty now have one more research tool available at their fingertips. The Block Museum of Art and Northwestern University Libraries are pleased to announce the completion of a strategic project to integrate the museum’s collection records into the Libraries’ search database. The Block Museum of Art’s collection of over 6,000 artworks is now searchable through Northwestern Libraries’ online catalog via NUSearch.

Northwestern Libraries are pleased to announce that Northwestern has entered another major transformative open access agreement with Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), effective January 1, 2024. The agreement covers a three-year term, until 2027. Under the terms of the agreement, Northwestern readers can access all ACM publications including journals, magazines, books, conference proceedings, and special interest group newsletters, and Northwestern corresponding authors will have their works published with open access licenses at no cost to the author.

Dean of Libraries Xuemao Wang has appointed Kevin Leonard ’77, ’82 MS, the current University Archivist, to the new role of University Historian, effective January 1, 2024.

Northwestern Libraries is proud to announce our partnership with Penn State University Libraries and the University of Minnesota Libraries on a project for the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) to pilot a library-led service model for supporting hosted, open source, online homework delivery systems as supplemental resources for teaching with open educational resources (OER).

Northwestern Libraries are pleased to introduce the Faculty Advisory Committee. Though previously the Libraries had an advisory group that included both faculty and students, this new committee focuses specifically on faculty input and interests. As an advisory group for the Dean of Libraries, the committee will have a key role in making recommendations on policy matters, new initiatives, collections, and services.

James Lee joins Northwestern on September 1 as associate University librarian for academic innovation. He also begins a joint appointment as a tenured associate professor in the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications.

After a year in an interim leadership role, Rachel Cole has been appointed the head of the Transportation Library at Northwestern University Libraries. Cole has worked in the Transportation Library since 2015, beginning as a reference librarian. Since then, she has established herself as an asset to the Libraries’ research and engagement programs, said Xuemao Wang, Dean of Libraries.

Beginning in September 2023, Northwestern Libraries will shift support for Open Access publishing to institutional-level initiatives. The scholarly publishing landscape has evolved over the past decade resulting in several initiatives that advance OA at the collective level. The Libraries currently support several of these initiatives for Northwestern and participate in additional initiatives as a partner in the Big Ten Academic Alliance.

Northwestern Libraries is pleased to share the announcement from the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) of the extension of its landmark open publishing agreement with Wiley. The three-year agreement, which will be effective as of January 1, 2023, gives 14 participating universities, including Northwestern, access to publish and read in Wiley’s full journal portfolio, including Hindawi’s gold open access portfolio.