William King Richardson (1859–1951) was a member of the Harvard College Class of 1880. Just two years later he earned a double first at Balliol College, Oxford University (purportedly the first American to obtain this distinction at Oxford). His library was begun at the Lord Amherst of Hackney sale in 1908. For more than forty…
Is that a dewberry?
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Going for a hike in France? Be sure to bring your favorite pocket atlas! Atlas de poche des plantes des champs, des prairies et des bois : a l’usage des promeneurs et des excursionistes was probably…
School-to-Work program helps with Charles S. Peirce project at Houghton.
A Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School student helped re-house the Peirce papers. For the fourth consecutive year, we have 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…
Advertising just ain’t what it used to be
It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes I yearn for The Good Old Days. Consider this advertising flier, which our intrepid sheet music surveyor Dana Gee discovered during her inventory of the Historical Sheet Music Collections of Houghton Library and the Harvard Theatre Collection….
New on OASIS in May
Finding aids for four newly cataloged collections have been added to the OASIS database this month: Processed by: Michael Austin Progressive Party records, 1908-1920 (MS Am 3078) Minimally Processed by: Adrien Hilton Christopher Durang papers, 1957-2013 (MS Thr 1379) Processed by: Erin Mernoff with assistance from Andrea Cawelti Sheet music by performer, circa 1800-2000…
Champion of counterculture
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Actuel may just be the magazine equivalent of a cat with nine lives. This French publication has seen some three iterations, beginning as a jazz and alternative music review in 1967. Taken over by Jean-François Bizot…
The one-pull press and printing on half sheets
By David Shaw One of the first things fledging historical bibliographers are taught is to identify formats: take a sheet of paper and fold it once to give folio format, fold again to make a quarto gathering, and once again for an octavo. Then they need to know about chain lines, wire lines and where…
Flying carpet
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Richard Halliburton was an American adventurer, journalist, and travel writer who may be best remembered as swimming the length of the Panama canal and only paying 36 cents for his toll. He apparently caught the travel bug while in…
Free love, free land
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Free love and communal living dominated the Counterculture Movement throughout the United States, nowhere as widespread as in San Francisco, California. Young people fled to the Haight-Ashbury district in the late 1960s and early 1970s, seeking…
Prompt Service: Cataloging the HTC Promptbooks
For much of the past year, I have had the pleasure of cataloging promptbooks from the Harvard Theatre Collection. Promptbooks are texts of plays which have been annotated with stage directions, alterations, descriptions of scenery or sound effects, and other details from actual use in the theatre. They function almost like a blueprint to a…