By Rana Issa, Department of English, American University of Beirut, and 2017–2018 Houghton Visiting Fellow I love the archive. Mostly, I love all the wonderful scraps of paper that do not have any direct bearing on the stories I like to tell. Scraps that encapsulate their own story and that may not fit into seamless…
Now in Print: Reconstructing the Personal Library of William James by Ermine Algaier
A hearty congratulations to 2017–2018 Houghton Visiting Fellow Ermine L. Algaier IV, Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Monmouth College in Illinois, who recently published his book, Reconstructing the Personal Library of William James: Markings and Marginalia from the Harvard Library Collection (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019). Dr. Algaier provides a comprehensive account…
A Boston High School Grad Dives into Library Work
By Vicki Denby, Manuscript-End Processor, Houghton Library This summer, Houghton Library partnered with the City of Cambridge to hire a paid intern from the Summer Youth Employment Program (or SYEP), which offers work to high school students in both Cambridge and Boston. Richard Chen, from the class of 2019 at Josiah Quincy Upper School in…
A Year on Fellowship at Houghton Library
In a recent post, we encouraged scholars who live a distance from Cambridge to apply for a Houghton Visiting Fellowship. The post has all the details, but the long and short of it is that winners receive $3,600 to support at least four weeks (not necessarily consecutively) of research at Houghton. Fellows get to really…
Apply for a 2020–2021 Houghton Library Visiting Fellowship
We are excited to announce that we are now accepting applications for the 2020–2021 Houghton Library Visiting Fellowship Program, which offers funding to scholars at all stages of their careers so they may pursue projects that require in-depth research on the library’s holdings, draw on staff expertise, and participate in intellectual life at Harvard. Visiting…
Planting Seeds at Houghton Library
By Vicki Denby, Manuscript End-Processor, Houghton Library For the seventh consecutive year, Houghton Library has 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 of Clerical and Technical Workers…
The Castañé Collection Series: “Three: Marshal Zhukov’s Pocket Knife”
By Michael Austin, Manuscript Cataloger, Houghton Library The José María Castañé collection of material relating to major conflicts of the 20th century, held by Houghton Library, contains an incredible variety of artifacts: chiefly papers, such as correspondence, military orders, work permits, and personal identification cards, but also a significant number of photographs and objects. In…
August 9, 2019
By Tom Hyry, Florence Fearrington Librarian of Houghton Library At 4:00 this afternoon, August 9, 2019, Houghton Library closed its doors. Over the next 13 months, we will embark on a renovation that will make our spaces more accessible, welcoming, and useful for modern research and teaching. The library will suspend services for two weeks…
New Pages to Turn: Recent Additions to Houghton’s Theodore Roosevelt Collection
By Gregory Wynn In his recently published memoir, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Robert Caro recounts that an early career admonishment from an editor to “turn every page” while investigating a story was one of the best pieces of advice he had ever been given (Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing, 2019, p. 11). This call to thoroughness and…
A Mysterious Manuscript in a Banned Language
By Christine E. Jacobson, Assistant Curator, Modern Books and Manuscripts, Houghton Library Houghton recently acquired a nineteenth-century bilingual manuscript of Ukrainian and Russian folk songs and verse. At first glance, the work seems unremarkable. At 370 pages, it contains over 120 poems and songs, including well-known works by Alexander Pushkin and Taras Shevchenko as well…