This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. For some 40 years, Poster Auctions International has been holding auctions at Rennert’s Gallery in New York City for their collection of rare vintage posters. This collection spans art noveau, art deco, and modern pieces of…
Son of The heroism of King George
It has already been a busy summer. I had the great good fortune last week to take another Rare Book School course, The Stationers’ Company to 1775, taught by the extraordinary Ian Gadd. Now, you may ask, what the heck is The Stationers’ Company? Basically, it is what today we would call a guild, which…
William King Richardson, Part II: “One of the most remarkable specimens of XVth century binding I have ever seen.”
In April the library began a three month project entering provenance information from Houghton incunabula into the Manuscript Evidence in Incunabula database (MEI). Maintained by the Consortium of European Research Libraries, MEI enables scholars to research and compare copy-specific features in incunabula across an international multitude of repositories. These two sets of image show the…
The Drug Demon
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Published in 1940, Narcotics: Destroyer of Mind and Body or The Drug Demon warns Americans about the dangers of drug addiction “found not only in the large cities…but also in towns, villages and isolated spots.” The…
William King Richardson, Part I: Diplomas and Certificates
William King Richardson (1859–1951) was a member of the Harvard College Class of 1880. Just two years later he earned a double first at Balliol College, Oxford University (purportedly the first American to obtain this distinction at Oxford). His library was begun at the Lord Amherst of Hackney sale in 1908. For more than forty…
Is that a dewberry?
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Going for a hike in France? Be sure to bring your favorite pocket atlas! Atlas de poche des plantes des champs, des prairies et des bois : a l’usage des promeneurs et des excursionistes was probably…
School-to-Work program helps with Charles S. Peirce project at Houghton.
A Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School student helped re-house the Peirce papers. For the fourth 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 the School-to-Work program, (STW), the Harvard Union…
Advertising just ain’t what it used to be
It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes I yearn for The Good Old Days. Consider this advertising flier, which our intrepid sheet music surveyor Dana Gee discovered during her inventory of the Historical Sheet Music Collections of Houghton Library and the Harvard Theatre Collection….
New on OASIS in May
Finding aids for four newly cataloged collections have been added to the OASIS database this month: Processed by: Michael Austin Progressive Party records, 1908-1920 (MS Am 3078) Minimally Processed by: Adrien Hilton Christopher Durang papers, 1957-2013 (MS Thr 1379) Processed by: Erin Mernoff with assistance from Andrea Cawelti Sheet music by performer, circa 1800-2000…
Champion of counterculture
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Actuel may just be the magazine equivalent of a cat with nine lives. This French publication has seen some three iterations, beginning as a jazz and alternative music review in 1967. Taken over by Jean-François Bizot…