Catching up with the Newberry

If you're just in from Mars and haven't yet started following the intermittent "Genealogy News" blog of Chicago's Newberry Library, here's what you missed in the last month:

FamilySearch Labs is putting up Cook County birth certificates.

The Hyde Park Herald newspaper is digitizing its archives, including 1950s, 1960s, and 1990s so far.

Selected items from the Newberry's own collections are up on Internet Archive, including primarily church histories and a number of specialized directories it would be easy to miss: Board of Trade, "Jewish Community Blue book," law and medical directories, "Colored people's blue-book," real-estate dealers, and a Bohemian directory and almanac.