As a cataloger in a university library, naturally student life is of particular interest. So when I ran across Johann Strauss Jr.’s waltz Studentenlust (Students’ Joy), the cover illustration delighted me. The guy in the center is inked slightly darker, and clearly meant to be the focus: but what of his joys? A pipe, a Read More

For the second in our series on Big Data (Demons are here) in John Ward’s collection of Strauss family dance music (surely a present-day Strauss would even now be writing a Data-Crunching Waltz!) we turn to images of women. The accomplished young lady beguiling long family evenings at her keyboard, or livening up a gathering Read More

Those of us who process dance music in the Ward Collection sometimes feel like we are running our own version of Big Data. John M. Ward donated to Houghton a significant collection of music used for social dance, from the Tudor era right up through the Vietnam War. The Strauss family was a particular favorite Read More

One of the greatest pleasures in a cataloger’s life is to see their work being used out in the world, particularly when said work transforms one’s original concept of any given cataloged item. I had just such a pleasure this week, when Isabella Bradford, one of the Two Nerdy History Girls, wrote a blog on Read More

I’m delighted to report that Houghton has just received a grant to survey sheet music collections across the Harvard Library system. This welcome support comes to us through Harvard’s “Open Your Hidden Collections” program, funded by the Arcadia Foundation. Regular readers of our blog will sense the glee behind this announcement: as I’ve written here Read More