[Thanks to Senior Manuscript Cataloger Bonnie Salt for contributing this post] A large and historically important collection of American minstrelsy materials has just been cataloged for the Harvard Theatre Collection and the finding aid is now available on OASIS: American Minstrel Show Collection (MS Thr 556)

[Thanks to Ward cataloger Andrea Cawelti for providing the basis for this post.] Carl Maria von Weber’s opera Der Freischütz was an immediate hit when it was first performed in Berlin in 1821, creating strong demand for a printed score. Like nearly all musical scores of the time period, the score was printed from engraved Read More

Harvard graduate student Philipp Penka was awarded first place in this year’s competition for the Philip Hofer Prize for Collecting Books or Art, for his collection of works published by Russian displaced persons following World War II. The Hofer Prize, named for a former Houghton curator and donor, is awarded each year to the Harvard Read More

The highlight of the recent auction at Sotheby’s of items from the James S. Copley Library was a letter signed by Button Gwinnett. Gwinnett’s is a name that is familiar mostly only to autograph collectors: he was one of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence. Because he died in a duel less than Read More

Conservators at Weissman Preservation Center have discovered that a photograph from the William James collection was made with the rare Kallitype process, a predecessor to gelatin silver prints. Read the full story at Harvard College Library News.