What’s Your Favorite Color?: Looking at Archives Anew

What’s your favorite color and why? It’s a question that seems to pop up often as a child. You’d meet someone on the playground or on the first day of school, and the question would inevitably come up.

Why?

Perhaps it’s an attempt to find common ground or familiarity in a stranger, or maybe it’s just a way to spark curiosity about likes and dislikes. After reading Imani Perry’s Black in Blues: How A Color Tells the Story of My People, I’ve come to appreciate the endless possibilities that color holds. It can tell stories, evoke history, and provide insight into narratives we might not always consider.

When you think of an archive, what color comes to mind? If you’re thinking of a digital archive, the color of the icons or folders might be the first thing you consider. As for a physical archive you might think first of the color of the boxes and folders that are used to house/store the material.

An archive can represent a variety of colors. Since Perry’s Black in Blue inspired this post, I decided to challenge myself by creating a list of collections and items connected to blue. In Menea Cottin’s Black Book of Colors, the narrator describes blue as the color of the sky when kites are flying and the sun is shining down, which makes me think of Special Collections' Chicago Park District Collections.

At the start of my search, the first name that came to mind was children’s author and fellow Chicagoan, Blue Balliett, which instantly made me think of Special Collections Hyde Park Community Collection. Even though I didn’t include anything from that collection, in the image gallery below, it sparked an interest in just how often blue would come up in our collections.

This exploration has been truly exciting, and I'm eager to share some of the many shades of blue I've discovered in the archives. For example, there's the ink used to print the text for Blue Skies for Library Kids, a key initiative within the Chicago Public Library system in the early 1990s that aimed to create community-based programming for children and families. Another example is the indigo-colored artillery jacket worn by Private John Stagg, as recorded in the Grand Army of the Republic's records. And that's just the beginning. There's certainly more to uncover.

Have you spotted anything blue in the archives? Let us know in the comments.

If you would like to see any of the items shared in this post or learn more about the library's special collections, feel free to make an appointment, opens a new window.