By Joseph Gauvreau, Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature. Joseph was a summer 2018 Pforzheimer Fellow in Harvard Library. Working closely with Christina Linklater (a Houghton music cataloger and keeper of the Isham Memorial Library in the Loeb Music Library), he reported a number of Harvard’s music manuscript holdings to RISM. Joseph’s essay is published in…
Collections Now Available for Research: November
Houghton Library is pleased to announce the following collections are now described online and accessible in the reading room. Moll Flanders Memorial Collection of Trade Cards of Enterprising London Businesswomen, circa 1980-2018 (MS Eng 1801) – processed by Melanie Wisner Collection of Marbled Papers, circa 1945-2005 (52L-1152) – processed by Melanie Wisner Hermann Hagedorn Papers,…
An Intimate and Symbolic Bond: Quentin Roosevelt, the Great War, and American-French Relations
By Vincent Harmsen, 2017–2018 Houghton Library Visiting Fellow and recipient of the William Dearborn Fellowship in American History. Mr. Harmsen holds a master’s degree in history from the Sorbonne University, Paris. November 19, 1918 would have been the twenty-first birthday of Quentin Roosevelt, son of Theodore Roosevelt. However, Quentin had died in France a few…
Born-Digital Blog Post #7: Accessioning Workflow part 2
This post continues the series, “Behind the Scenes at Houghton,” giving a glimpse into the inner workings of the library’s mission to support teaching and research. Thanks to Magdaline Lawhorn, Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Resident & Project Archivist, for contributing this post. In Born-Digital Blog Post #6 we began to discuss the…
What’s in a Photograph? A Photograph by Any Other Name is Still a Photograph
By Lillianne Keaney, Horblit Project Cataloger, Houghton Library The term “photograph” is actually quite broad. It encompasses black and white photographs (gelatin silver prints), chromogenic color prints, albumen prints, carbon prints, collodion prints, salted paper prints, digital photographs, palladium prints, daguerreotypes, and many others that are produced using different photographic processes (check out Graphics Atlas…
Collections Now Available for Research: September & October, 2018
Houghton Library is pleased to announce the following collections are now described online and accessible in the reading room. Ruthanna Boris Papers, 1929-2003 (MS Thr 1850) – processed by Adrien Hilton Collection of French Booksellers’ Catalogs and Prospectuses circa 1769-1799 (MS Fr 693) – processed by Magee Lawhorn Harvard Theatre Collection Photographic Postcards of Groups and…
r.ed in residence
By Dale Stinchcomb, Assistant Curator of the Harvard Theatre Collection Frankenweek is in full swing and Houghton is participating in a Harvard-wide celebration of all things Franken-Shelley. A film series, an exhibition, and a marathon reading are just a few of the activities planned to mark the 200th anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein. Mary Shelley’s influence…
Opening the Drawers of the Harvard Theatre Collection
This post, by Project Archivist Betts Coup, continues the series “Behind the Scenes at Houghton,” giving a glimpse into the inner workings of the library’s mission to support teaching and research. When processing a collection, the ultimate goal is to make the materials discoverable by researchers and easily accessible by library staff. When I started…
Looking Beyond the Text in Frances Wolfreston’s Books
By Sarah Lindenbaum In the introduction of Marks in Books, Roger Stoddard’s catalogue of his 1984 exhibit on marginalia and other book traces, he writes, “As anthropologists have discovered, traces of wear can tell us how artifacts were used by human beings. Books no less than tools, apparel, and habits can show signs of wear,…
Translated for Action: Gabriel Harvey’s Grammar-Drama
This post was written by Andrew S. Keener, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Santa Clara University. A recipient of the Katharine F. Pantzer Jr. Fellowship in Descriptive Bibliography, Keener was a 2016–2017 Houghton Library Visiting Fellow. The sixteenth-century scholar Gabriel Harvey has fascinated researchers of early modern reading and handwriting for decades, but an investigation…