Houghton Library Blog

Calling All Movie Buffs!

11 April 2018 15 responses John Overholt Collections in Focus

UPDATE: The response to this post was so great we’ve posted 25 new unidentified movie stills–let us know if you can help!

We recently cataloged a collection of several hundred film stills as part of the Ludlow-Santo Domingo Library. Many identify the film or actor depicted, but to make this collection as useful as possible to researchers, we’d love your help identifying those with no caption. If you recognize the film or stars in these images, please leave a comment below, and be sure to give the number of the photo you’re referring to.

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Aspects of Edward Lear (Part IV)

one response ameze Research

‘Never was there a luckier piece of work!’, remarked Philip Hofer when recalling W. B. O. Field’s gift of over 3,500 of Lear’s pictures to Houghton in 1942. In recent years a comprehensive online finding aid has been created, which includes high-resolution images of the drawings and detailed transcriptions of the annotations Lear made on them. Not intended for sale, these pictures were his aide mémoires, references, trials for future work. Yet their unfinished state often lends them an understated, beguiling beauty, and it also allows us to catch the artist in the act of creation, to eavesdrop on his thoughts as he talks to himself while composing. As Hofer observed in his illuminating study, Edward Lear as a Landscape Draughtsman, the year in which Lear began adding nonsense words to his drawings (‘rox’ to denote ‘rocks’, say, or ‘raven’ to signify ‘ravine’) was the same year in which he was preparing his first Book of Nonsense for press. ‘O path!’, he writes on one sketch. Such whimsical hailings might stand as invitations to viewers to take their own unusual paths through the images—and to read them with nonsense in mind.

Granted, many of the pictures are distinctly non-nonsensical:

Near Tivoli: Ponte Nomentano, 1842? Houghton Library, MS Typ 55.26 (229)

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Born-Digital Post #3: Space

5 April 2018 ameze In Practice

This post continues the series, “Behind the Scenes at Houghton”, giving a glimpse into the inner workings of the library’s mission to support teaching and research. Thanks to Magdaline Lawhorn, Administrative Fellow & Project Archivist, for contributing this post.

Our born-digital journey continues to be filled with research, trial and error, and lots of excel spreadsheets. Besides all of the technical preparations and planning that make up Houghton’s born-digital project, there are physical requirements that have to be addressed as well. Location, location, location! Physical space is very important to the success of accessioning the backlog identified in the survey; it is one of the factors that determines how quickly we can gain access to the materials. Ironically, digital materials (all those ones and zeros) do take up physical space!

Two of the main concerns are where to house the materials throughout the survey and where to conduct the survey and actually accession the materials. At the beginning we knew right away that we could not house all of the born-digital materials (currently mixed in with manuscript material, so it takes up a ton of space) and accession in the same place due to the physical constraints of our office. So, we determined that if accessioning were to take place in our office, an alternative space needed to be created for staging the materials. In order to find temporary storage we talked to one of our colleagues Micah Hoggatt, Reference Librarian, whose familiarity negotiating space at Houghton came in handy. Micah was able to find temporary space, two bays in our stacks (in the sub-basement).

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Collections Now Available for Research: April 2018

John Overholt Collections in Focus Now Available for Research

Houghton Library is pleased to announce that the following collections now have descriptive finding aids and are available for research in the library’s reading room.

Richard Baldridge Manuscripts and Letters, 1927-1964 (MS Thr 125) – processed by Irina Klyagin

Boris Bilinsky Costume Designs for Cinema, Theater and Ballet, 1924-1943 (MS Thr 317) – processed by Irina Klyagin

Martin Camacho Subject Files on Labor During the Allied Occupation of Japan, 1942-1953 (MS Am 3164) – processed by Ashley Nary

George Chaffee collection of dance prints and original drawings, circa 1613-1921, undated (MS Thr 861) – processed by Betts Coup

Doris Dickinson Dinsmore Papers Relating to Serge Soudeikine, circa 1940-1979 (MS Thr 640) – processed by Irina Klyagin

Monroe Engel Correspondence, circa 1947-1981 (MS Am 3163) – processed by Magdaline Lawhorn

Robert D. Graff Papers on the Production of Young Cassidy, 1960-1976 (MS Thr 318) – processed by Irina Klyagin

Lowell Family Papers, 1836-1928 (MS Am 3166) – processed by Elizabeth Amos and Adrien Hilton

Ludlow-Santo Domingo Library Pulp Fiction Collection, circa 1900-1970s (MS Am 3136) – processed by Adrien Hilton, Elise Ramsey, Ryan Wheeler, and a number of student assistants

Norman Mailer 1969 New York Mayoral Campaign Papers, circa 1968-1970 (MS Am 3168) – processed by Melanie Wisner

James Metcalf Collection of Correspondence and Photographs By and Related to Tennessee Williams (MS Thr 1774) – processed by Melanie Wisner

Costume Designs by William J. C. Pitcher for Ballet and Theater, 1889-1905 (MS Thr 1770) – processed by Melanie Wisner

Letters to Sarah and William Siddons, 1780-1795 (MS Thr 395) – processed by Irina Klyagin

Ernst Weil Catalog Cards, circa 1924-1965 (MS Eng 1822) – processed by Ashley Nary

Exhibition catalogs digitized

22 March 2018 John Overholt Events and Exhibitions

We’re pleased to share the news that we’ve digitized a few of our favorite exhibition catalogs from the past, focused on our collection of Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. We hope those interested in the field will find them a valuable resource.

Late Medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts, 1350-1525, in the Houghton Library (1983)
The Bible in the Twelfth Century: An Exhibition of Manuscripts at the Houghton Library (1988)
The Marks in the Fields: Essays on the Uses of Manuscripts (1992)
Picturing Prayer: the Book of Hours in the Middle Ages (2006)
Of Current Interest: Recent Research on Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Houghton Library (2006)