Our recent Hidden Collections sheet music project has continued to produce treasures from the Historical Sheet Music Collections of Houghton and the Harvard Theatre Collection. (Yes, as Susan Sarandon would say in Bull Durham, we need a nickname.) We have now identified 29 different issues of Hawaiian Butterfly. Even as familiar with the vagaries of…
Living on Love
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Ever wondered how you can live like a hippie in the 1960s? The hippy’s handbook : how to live on love could be just what you need. This tongue in cheek guide tells you how to save…
New on OASIS in November
Finding aids for six collections have been significantly updated or newly added to the OASIS database this month: Processed by: Michael Austin Daniel Aaron papers, circa 1774-2015 (MS Am 2951) Processed by: Adrien Hilton Franz Liszt letters, 1848-1886 (MS Ger 323) Theodore Roosevelt Senior letterpress copybooks, 1869-1878 (MS Am 3067) Additions to the John Updike…
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…
A picture is worth a thousand words
We have all heard it. If you think of googling it, by the way, don’t—nobody really knows who said it first. We have all said it. Ironically, even writers are fond of it. “The drawing shows me at one glance what might be spread over ten pages in a book,” says Evgenii Bazarov, the revolutionary-inclined…
Bear’s foot?
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. I have to say as we have processed this immense collection one of the things that never ceases to delight me are the names of various plants. For example Bear’s foot, which is named because it has…