See HCL News for the full story on the discoveries made by paper conservator Christopher Sokolowski in the course of treating a number of items damaged in a water leak in 2008. Perhaps the most interesting of these relates to a collection of drawings from an early-17th century French ballet. Under x-ray fluorescence analysis, Sokolowski…
Gian Vincenzo Pinelli and His Library
The Humanities Center Seminar in the History of the Book and Houghton Library, Harvard University, are pleased to present the following lecture by Professor Angela Nuovo of the Universita di Udine: Gian Vincenzo Pinelli (1535-1601) and His Library: Book Collecting and the Republic of Letters in Late Renaissance Italy Thursday, October 14, 5pm Barker Center…
Early Maps of Siberia Digitized
[Public Services Assistant Emilie Hardman contributed this post about the recently completed digitization of a set of 17th-century maps of Siberia.] This person grew up and became rooted In a bright-blue country, So great that it could not be encircled in flight By nine waves of white-headed cranes Even in nine full years… Traditional poetry…
John Ward and His Magnificent Collection
[This post was contributed by William Stoneman, Florence Fearrington Librarian of Houghton Library.] John Ward and His Magnificent Collection, edited by Gordon Hollis and published earlier this year by Golden Legend, Inc., is described by Hollis as a second festschrift in honor of Ward, a full 25 years after a first festschrift and his retirement…
New on OASIS in October
Finding aids for 12 newly cataloged collections have been added to the OASIS database this month, including illustrations for T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom, watercolor images of 19th-century Boston theaters, and interviews with psychoanalyst Erik Erikson….
Can We Risk the Abyss?
On October 12th, noted biographer Lyndall Gordon will speak at Houghton Library. Her talk, “‘Abyss has no biographer’: Can we risk the Abyss?” will focus on her recently published biography of Emily Dickinson, Lives like loaded guns: Emily Dickinson and her family’s feuds (2010). The book has stirred some controversy by proposing that the poet…
New Special Collections Request Accounts
Today, Houghton Library introduces a new special collections request system that allows patrons to register and place requests for materials online. This system replaces paper registration and paper forms to request materials to use in the library, and because it will eventually be HCL-wide, will eliminate the need for patrons to register separately at each…
Johnny Green, Body and Soul
[Manuscript Cataloger Michael Austin recently completed a major project to catalog our extensive collection of papers relating to composer and Harvard alumnus Johnny Green. He contributed this post about Green and his collection.] If Johnny Green had listened to his father, the twentieth century would have been deprived of one of its greatest artists in…
New on OASIS in September
It’s been a busy month for the manuscript catalogers! Finding aids for 15 newly cataloged collections have been added to the OASIS database this month, including portraits of burlesque dancers, theatrical costume designs, ephemera from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Shows, and manuscripts of the Nicaraguan writer Rubén Darío:…
They could have danced all night
[Thanks to Ward Project Music Cataloger Andrea Cawelti for contributing this post.] Exploding the myth that 19th century balls were sedate affairs, a new acquisition in the John Milton and Ruth Neils Ward Collection shows 12 hand-colored lithographs of various balls, ca. 1854. As one can see at a glance, the waltzes and polkas of…