Isn’t it always the way, that once one begins opening boxes, all kinds of surprising things appear. This was certainly the case with our recent Hidden Collections grant, to survey all of our historical sheet music collections. Our sheet music had for years been shelved in an end-of-Raiders-of-the-Lost-Ark-warehouse-y kind of situation, awaiting the time and…
Pict Ale
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. As the title suggests this is an entertaining read on the history, legends, and facts regarding beer along with clever illustrations. The self-proclaimed “beer king” Alan Eames covers everything from the invention of beer, drinking habits of…
Nineteenth-Century Bound Sheet Music Volumes Part III: Thomas J. Kiernan volume of American vocal music, circa 1843-1871
Of the nearly four hundred bound sheet music volumes held in Houghton, many were owned by the same person – there are at least seven owned by Edith Forbes Perkins, for example, and over a dozen by Catharine Dean Flint. Just as interesting, however, are single volumes, one of which is highlighted below….
Nineteenth-Century Bound Sheet Music Volumes Part II: Souvenir of the Confederacy
Most bound volumes in our collection that are about one inch thick contain between thirty and forty individual pieces. This volume, unassuming as it is, contains ninety three….
Nineteenth-Century Bound Sheet Music Volumes Part I: Edith Forbes Perkins volumes
With one of this summer’s Pforzheimer fellowships came the opportunity for frequent trips to a remote corner of Houghton Library’s sub-basement level, where several hundred bound sheet music volumes lay waiting to be catalogued. Thanks to Dana Gee’s extraordinary work with the Hidden Collections Sheet Music project, tens of thousands of loose sheet music scores…
Undergraduates at Houghton, Part III: Iberian Books Project
A sure-fire way to learn just how rare the books in a rare book library can be is to try documenting potential evidence of their existence. Since May, I have scanned images of 164 books and pamphlets at Houghton. The demands of the task required me to call for items in batches, instead of attempting…
Catnip not just for cats
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Plantas que curan y plantas que matan written in Spanish by Arias Carbajal certainly makes a splashy impression with its pulpy cover. The title translates to “plants that cure and plants that kill” and includes both theoretical and practical…
Join the Conspiracy!
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. In late summer 1968, delegates gathered in Chicago for the 35th Democratic National Convention. It had been a year of war, assassinations, and riots. The North Vietnamese launched the Tet offensive in January. Martin Luther King,…
Undergraduates at Houghton, Part II: Material Evidence in Incunabula
A number of Houghton Library incunables—books printed using moveable type before 1501—were donated between 1955 and 1965 by Ward M. Canaday, member of the Harvard College class of 1907. Several of those books were deposited in Houghton by Adriana R. Salem before being purchased by Canaday; Cambridge had been the end-point of Salem’s trans-Atlantic journey…
Psychic TV
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. On Easter Sunday in 1984, English experimental video art and music group Psychic TV conducted a performance at the Massachusetts College of Art. Physic TV members Genesis P-Orridge and John Gosling were interviewed after this performance,…