Month: October 2016

Front facade of Houghton Library

Don’t Eat That Mushroom!

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Mushrooms- they are cheap and legal, but how do you ensure that you don’t eat the wrong one?  Hallucinogenic Mushrooms contains information on identification, buying and eating mushrooms, different species, current laws, as well as poisonous mushrooms in Britain. This…

Lost Maiden found

It’s official: I adore the Illustrated London News [this is a Harvard resource I fear, and password-protected]. Once again, it has come to my rescue when I’ve needed solid visual clarification about a historical event. This time (regular readers will remember my earlier Crimean adventure) as a part of the clean-up after our Historical Sheet…

Want to live on a Commune?

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. What exactly is a Commune?  I’ll use the words from the Commune : Journal of the Commune Movement to explore the concept.  According to Joan (one of the contributors) there are many different types of Commune scenes.  You have…

New on OASIS in October

Finding aids for two collections have been added to the OASIS database this month: Minimally Processed by: Melanie Wisner Opera Boston records, circa 2003-2013 (MS Thr 1536) Minimally Processed by: Dana Gee with assistance from Andrea Cawelti and Adrien Hilton Edward C. Vose collection of sheet music, 1870-1950 (MS Thr 1546)…

Top Secret Weapons Systems of 1792

In late 1792, most of Europe was becoming increasingly troubled by the aggressive actions of France’s revolutionary First Republic, which had declared war on Austria and Prussia in April 1792. The War of the First Coalition (1792–1797) was the first attempt by the European monarchies to defeat the French in their political ambitions. The Austrian…