This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection. People have always been fascinated with the idea of a soul. One researcher, Rick Strassman, took this interest to the extreme and performed government approved research using the psychedelic drug N,N-dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, also known as the spirit…
Morbid beauty
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring material from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Of the many altered states of consciousness chronicled in the Santo Domingo Collection, death may be merely the most permanent; as a subject often circumnavigated out of discomfort, fear, superstition, or propriety, it takes its place alongside sexuality and drug…
Road Trip in the 2 CV!
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Introduced by Citroën at a Paris motor show in 1948 the 2 CV remained in production up until 1990. Originally designed with practicality in mind the initial goal of the 2 CV was to carry a dozen eggs over a…
Illustrated news from the Crimean War
One of the greatest pleasures in a cataloger’s life is to see their work being used out in the world, particularly when said work transforms one’s original concept of any given cataloged item. I had just such a pleasure this week, when Isabella Bradford, one of the Two Nerdy History Girls, wrote a blog on…
Nourishing Words
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection. Whole Grains is a book edited by Art Spiegelman and Bob Schneider that is composed entirely of quotes. Even the introduction is just another collection of quotes without any explanatory prose. The book is made up of four…
Wesley’s War Tableaux
While cataloging American Civil War broadsides, I found this playbill advertising Wesley’s War Tableaux, to be presented in Cambridge, Massachusetts at the Lyceum Hall from February 23-25 [1863]. Moving panoramas were large painted scenes on rolls of canvas, framed by a proscenium to hide the mechanism; they were unwound from one roll to another, to…
Houghton Participates in School-to-Work Program
For the third consecutive year, we have had the opportunity to hire a paid intern from the Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School (CRLS) to learn about our work by helping end-process our collections. Through this program the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW) coordinates with the Cambridge Office of Workforce Development, Harvard…
Hidden Collections: sheet music
I’m delighted to report that Houghton has just received a grant to survey sheet music collections across the Harvard Library system. This welcome support comes to us through Harvard’s “Open Your Hidden Collections” program, funded by the Arcadia Foundation. Regular readers of our blog will sense the glee behind this announcement: as I’ve written here…
Freaks, Geeks, and Strange Girls
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Whether you think of sideshow banners as art or advertisement there is no denying their “wow” factor. Freaks, geeks & strange girls : sideshow banners of the Great American Midway is an anthology of perspectives on the…
New on OASIS in June
Fourteen new finding aids have been added to the OASIS database this month, including Gilbert & Sullivan libretti, programs from Harvard theatrical productions, and documents from U.S. colonial history. Processed by Irina Klyagin: Claud Lovat Fraser Designs, 1919-1921 (MS Thr 1131) Processed by Ashley M. Nary: Plays and Librettos by W. S. (William Schwenck) Gilbert,…