By Monique Lassere, Digital Archivist, Houghton Library Hi, everyone. My name is Monique and I am Houghton Library’s new Digital Archivist! I started working at Houghton in May 2020. My job sits within the Manuscript Section and revolves around the born-digital collections Houghton acquires in the form of media like hard drives and floppy disks,…
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…
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…
The Castañé Collection Series: “Two: Officer’s Photo Album”
By Michael Austin, Manuscript Cataloger, Houghton Library In my first post on Houghton Library’s holdings from the Castañé collection of documents and objects relating to European conflicts of the 20th century, I focused on two particularly poignant items: a ration card issued to a young Polish girl early in the Second World War and an…
All Work but Some Play: Jaret Berman, Houghton Library, and the School-to-Work Program
By Vicki Denby, Manuscript End Processor, Houghton Library For the sixth consecutive year, Houghton Library had the opportunity to hire a paid intern from the Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School (CRLS) to learn about our work by helping with collections end-processing, which among other activities includes labeling and housing items. Through the School-to-Work program,…
The Castañé Collection Series: “One: ‘Miscellaneous Items’”
By Michael Austin, Manuscript Cataloger, Houghton Library The Castañé collection, donated to Houghton Library in 2015 by Spanish businessman and collector José María Castañé, comprises over 10,000 items documenting the major conflicts of the 20th century involving European powers. Papers, photographs, and realia from the Second World War are most strongly represented, followed by material…
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…
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…