Finding aids for five newly cataloged collections have been added to the OASIS finding aid database this month, including the diaries of a railroad construction engineer, and a poetry notebook belonging to Sarah Orne Jewett. Processed by Bonnie B. Salt: Sarah Orne Jewett Verse Notebook and Family Autograph Album, 1870-1880 (MS Am 2831) Ernest Lewis Read More
Uncategorized
Comic Mischief
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection. Newspaper comic strips illuminate society in a way many other mediums cannot. Available on a daily basis, one can track changing trends in cultures by looking at the types of comic humor that was popular at the time. Read More
The science of anthropodermic binding
Tests have revealed that Houghton Library’s copy of Arsène Houssaye’s Des destinées de l’ame (FC8.H8177.879dc) is without a doubt bound in human skin. Harvard conservators and scientists tested the binding using several different methods. According to Senior Rare Book Conservator Alan Puglia, they are 99% confident that the binding is of human origin. Microscopic samples were taken Read More
Eleanor Steber at 100
This post is the first in a series on the Eleanor Steber collection to mark the centenary of her birth. A full century ago, this July, Eleanor Steber burst upon the world stage. She would later say unblushingly that she wasn’t “just born,” and that she had been “making grand entrances ever since.” Steber was Read More
Snowblind
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Robert Sabbag’s semi-biographical Snowblind, first published in 1976, tells the story of Zachary Swan, a 1970s cocaine smuggler who relied on scams and ruses to move drugs past customs officials and keep himself out of harm’s way in Read More