[thanks to Alison Harris, Roosevelt Project Cataloger/Metadata Specialist, for this post]
Houghton’s collaborative digitization project of the Theodore Roosevelt manuscript materials with Dickinson State University in North Dakota includes 11 scrapbooks. The scrapbooks were particularly tricky to capture due to both the fragility of the newspaper clippings themselves and their often unwieldy size when unfolded. Many thanks to our imaging department here at Harvard, in particular to Lily Brooks, who worked tirelessly to safely capture these images so that they are available to all.
Newspaper clippings dominate the majority of the materials pasted into the scrapbooks. Below you can see a somewhat verbose review of Roosevelt’s book, Hunting-Trips of a Ranchman, as well as one of many clippings of Roosevelt himself.
But what is particularly fascinating is stumbling upon the unexpected within the scrapbooks. Like finding a dinner menu, hosted by the Union League Club in honor of Roosevelt, in one of the pockets of the inside back cover. Or the discovery of a paste brush and scissors still faithfully occupying their designated places in the back of the volume. These items only enrich the experience of digitally paging through a personal scrapbook of Theodore Roosevelt.
To explore each scrapbook more fully use the links below. For a detailed description of each item see our online finding aid: Theodore Roosevelt Collection: Books, pamphlets, periodicals: Guide (trc0007), and search for the record number AAA0783 (call number Roosevelt R951.R67t).
