[Thanks to Andrea Cawelti, Ward Project Music Cataloger, for contributing this post.] Cadenzas can be one of the most thrilling parts of an opera performance. Sometimes added by the composer, but more often created by singers (or their advisors) to showcase their particular talents, cadenzas today are rarely improvised on the spot, but carefully practiced Read More

Finding aids for six newly cataloged collections have been added to the OASIS database this month, including the papers of Love Story author Erich Segal and 18th-century paintings of actors in the Comédie-Française.

The newest issue of the Harvard Gazette reports on the work of the Darwin Correspondence Project, and the excitement of two of the Harvard-based project members at locating a previously unrecorded Darwin letter at Houghton.

Arthur Rackham illustrations for Peter Pan, a 13th-century manuscript poem, and a passionate plea from Dorothea Dix are among this month’s newly digitized items. [Thanks to Emilie Hardman, Public Services/Metadata Assistant, and Susan Pyzynski, Associate Librarian for Technical Services, for contributing this post.]

The Fall 2010 issue of Philanthropy magazine includes an article on the 2003 bequest by Mary Hyde, Viscountess Eccles, not just of her unparalleled collection on the life and work of Samuel Johnson and his circle, but also of an endowment that funds the ongoing management and enhancement of the collection.