Cataloging work continues on Harvard College Library’s recently acquired collection of over 20,000 zines. Zines are non-commercial, non-professional and small-circulation publications that their creators produce, publish and either trade or sell themselves. For access to the collection, contact the Modern Books & Manuscripts department. Charles Schulz’s Peanuts is just one example of a typically mainstream, family-friendly…
The Book: Histories Across Time and Space
Did you know that this week, nine modules of “The Book: Histories Across Time and Space” launched on HarvardX? If you didn’t, but are interested in learning about scrolls, manuscripts, books, marks and marginalia, book sleuthing, and many other fascinating topics (featuring items from Houghton Library collections), head over to edX to see all nine modules….
Heister’s wedge
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Heister’s mouth-wedge was a popular tool used in dentistry in the late 19th and early 20th-century. The purpose of the tool was to keep the mouth wedged open in case a mouth-prop slipped, though one had…
Self-Made Woman
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. “Is it worth sacrificing a man of your own and children to be a successful business woman?” Originally published in 1932 this is the 1940 fourth printing of Self-Made Woman. The novel presents Cathleen McElroy as an…
Spirit of the mushroom
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Giorgio Samorini is an ethnobotantist and psychedelics researcher who has published a great deal on sacred plants and psychoactive compounds. This hand-produced report appears to be documentation written by Samorini along with the color photographs from visits…
“It was a glorious flowering”
When I arrived at the Houghton Library, it was to do research for a project I am pursuing on Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady of the United States, and World War II. While naturally the main site of interest for any researcher studying the career of Eleanor Roosevelt is the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde…
HER story
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Usually people purchase calendars because they have interesting or pretty pictures but the Women’s Heritage Calendar and Almanac is a different case. Explained perfectly in the introduction page, they state “History – never HER story. That’s…
New on OASIS in September
Finding aids for 16 newly cataloged collections were added to the OASIS database this month. This marks the last time this list will be compiled by Senior Manuscript Cataloger Bonnie B. Salt, who created more than 580 of these finding aids in the course of her distinguished career at Houghton. We are sorry to see…
The Life of Jesus?
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Léo Taxil was actually the pen name for Gabriel-Antoine Jogand-Pagès, a man born in Marseille who was educated by Jesuits in the mid 19th-century. He became extremely disillusioned with the Catholic faith during his time among…
Within the Cover of a Manuscript
One joy of working with pre-modern manuscripts comes from the process of discovery. These can be great—as the finding of a lost work—and small—an amusing marginal note left by a medieval reader. My discovery came on the first day of the four weeks I spent at the Houghton Library last summer in an unsuspecting manuscript….