Arts & Humanities
Bunraku, Japanese puppet theater, is an unusually complex dramatic form, a collaborative effort among puppeteers, narrators, and musicians. Columbia University Libraries' Bunraku collection is one the most extensive in the world, documenting its rich performance tradition, which has been recognized by UNESCO as a "masterpiece" of humanity.
The Bunraku gallery is divided into plays, productions, authors, backstage subjects, kashira, and characters. It documents the form's revival in the second half of the 20th century, through more than 12,500 slides and nearly 7,000 black-and-white photographs of rehearsals and performances.
The Biggert Collection of Architectural Vignettes on Commercial Stationery Gift of Robert Biggert in Honor of Lisa Ann Riveaux The Robert Biggert Collection of Architectural Vignettes on Commercial Stationery was donated to the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library by Robert Biggert in honor of Lisa Ann Riveaux. This unique collection of printed ephemera contains over 1,300 items with architectural imagery spanning the dates 1850 to 1920, in more than 350 cities and towns in forty-five states, as well as the District of Columbia and U.S. possessions. New York City is particularly well-represented with over 100 items portraying structures below Houston Street alone.
Chinese Paper Gods Collection Essays The images in this collection were assembled by Anne S. Goodrich (1895–2005) in 1931, when as a Christian missionary in Peking she became interested in local folk religious practices. She studied the paper gods in this collection for much of her life. After publishing her research conclusions in 1991, she donated these prints to the C. V. Starr East Asian Library, Columbia University. The images are divided initially by usage: Those which were purchased to be burned immediately and serve as emissaries to heaven; and those which were purchased to be displayed for a year while offering protection to the family in a variety of ways, before being burned. The images are further divided by display locations and by the deities they represent.
The Digital Scriptorium is a growing image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts that unites scattered resources from many institutions into an international tool for teaching and scholarly research. It bridges the gap between a diverse user community and the limited resources of libraries by means of sample imaging and extensive rather than intensive cataloguing.
About the Collection The C. V. Starr East Asian Library's run of Ling long women's magazine is one of the most complete outside China, acquired, we believe, in the late 1930s or early 1940s as part of a concerted effort to enlarge Columbia University's Chinese-language holdings. The collection expanded dramatically in the years between 1938 and 1941 when the holdings more than doubled, thanks to a special grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.
The Greene & Greene Virtual Archives (GGVA) contains images of drawings, sketches, photographs, correspondence, and other historical documents related to the work of the architects Greene & Greene, the southern California design firm (active 1894-1922) that is often associated with the finest architecture and craftsmanship of the American Arts and Crafts Movement. Recent photographic documentation of the firm’s furniture and other decorative arts is presented as part of the GGVA.
The New York Real Estate Brochure Collection, housed in Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library's Classics Department , consists of over 9,200 advertising brochures, floor plans, price lists, and related materials that document residential and commercial real estate development in the five boroughs of New York and outlying vicinities from the 1920s to the 1970s. The majority of the collection is offerings for apartment and other residential spaces. This collection of ephemeral advertising material constitutes an invaluable resource for researching New York City architecture. The brochures and related materials provide architects' and agents' names, illustrate interior and exterior views of buildings, display typical floor plans, and list prominent features of the buildings.
Isaac Newton, like Albert Einstein, is a quintessential symbol of the human intellect and its ability to decode the secrets of nature. Newton's fundamental contributions to science include the quantification of gravitational attraction, the discovery that white light is actually a mixture of immutable spectral colors, and the formulation of the calculus. Yet there is another, more mysterious side to Newton that is imperfectly known, a realm of activity that spanned some thirty years of his life, although he kept it largely hidden from his contemporaries and colleagues.
Welcome to the Hoagy Carmichael Collection! This multimedia web site is part of an 18-month project to catalog, digitize, and preserve every item in Indiana University's extensive collections pertaining to the life and career of master songwriter Hoagland "Hoagy" Carmichael (1899-1981). Carmichael grew up in Bloomington, Indiana, and graduated from the Indiana University (IU) School of Law. He composed his enduring pop standard, "Star Dust," in Bloomington, and the story of its creation has become an integral part of local history.
The Swinburne Project is a digital collection, or virtual archive, devoted to the life and work of Victorian poet Algernon Charles Swinburne. When complete the project will provide students and scholars with access to all available original works by Swinburne and selected contextual materials, including contemporary critical reactions, biographical works, and images of artwork about which Swinburne wrote. Major Update to Swinburne Project In April 2006, the Swinburne Project was re-released with new content and a new software system based on the eXtensible Text Framework (XTF) from the California Digital Library .
The Fine Arts Library currently houses 2,602 individual East Asian rubbings, the majority of which are from China. The rubbings were made from ancient stone stelae, tomb tablets, Buddhist and Daoist scriptures on stelae and rocks, as well as inscriptions and designs copied from bronze vessels, jade objects, ceramics, tomb bricks, and roof tiles, objects dating from the Qin Dynasty (221-207 BCE) to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 CE).
Introduction Online Exhibition In 1986, Baker Library issued an exhibition catalog titled Coin and Conscience: Popular Views of Money, Credit and Speculation: Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries. Catalog of an Exhibition of Prints from the Arnold and S. Bleichroeder Collection, Kress Library of Business and Economics, written by Ruth Rogers, then curator of the Kress Library at Baker Library. The images selected by Ms. Rogers for inclusion in the catalog represent the major thematic divisions of the Bleichroeder Collection , while also displaying its geographic and stylistic diversity. The publication provides introductory text, detailed descriptive information about seventy prints from the collection, an artist index, and a bibliography for further study.
Scope Daguerreotypes at Harvard provides access to over 3,500 daguerreotypes in libraries, museums, and archives across the University. The collection continues to grow as images are uncovered and new daguerreotypes are accessioned. The first publicly announced photographic medium, the daguerreotype process produced an image exquisite in its detail and tonal fidelity, and daguerreotypes remained popular throughout the 1840s and 50s. Together, Harvard holdings represent a collection of international significance and illustrate early uses of photography as a tool for artistic expression and scientific research in mid-19th-century America.
Introduction The Harvard-Yenching Library holds some 5,000 photographs and 10,000 negatives taken by Hedda Hammer Morrison (1908–1991) while resident in Beijing from 1933 to 1946. The photographs, mounted in thematic albums prepared by Mrs. Morrison, and the negatives, were bequeathed to the Harvard-Yenching Library, "the best permanent home for her vision of a city and people that she loved [Alastair Morrison]." All of the photographs contained in the 28 albums assembled by Hedda Morrison have been cataloged and digitized and can be viewed in VIA (Visual Information Access), the union catalog of visual resources at Harvard.
The Human Factor Introduction In the 1930s Harvard Business School colleagues Donald Davenport and Frank Ayres contacted leading businesses and requested photographs for classroom instruction—images Davenport hoped would “reveal the courage, industry and intelligence required of the American working man.” They amassed more than 2,100 photographs, from strangely beautiful views of men operating Midvale Steel’s 9,000-ton hydraulic press to women assembling tiny, delicate parts of Philco radios. Now students, and America’s aspiring corporate managers, had visual data to study “the human factor,” the interaction of worker and machine. But the pictures were more than documentary records.
Through the Islamic Heritage Project (IHP), Harvard University has cataloged, conserved, and digitized hundreds of Islamic manuscripts, maps, and published texts from Harvard’s renowned library and museum collections. These rare—and frequently unique—materials are now freely available to Internet users worldwide. IHP is made possible with the generous support of Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal . For the IHP, Harvard’s Open Collections Program (OCP) has produced digital copies of over 280 manuscripts, 275 printed texts, and 50 maps, totaling over 156,000 pages. Users can search or browse online materials that date from the 10th to the 20th centuries CE and represent many
The Mercator Globes Gerard Mercator was a publisher of maps and atlases but he also published two globes — the terrestrial globe of 1541 and the celestial globe of 1551. The globes were an instant commercial success and were the largest (42 cm) that had been produced to date. This online exhibit allows the viewer to study detailed images for each of the globes. The globes are now on permanent exhibit just outside of the entrance to the Map Collection in Pusey Library. Viewing Features of the Exhibition This exhibition offers a unique approach for viewing each globe.
Historical Collections Exhibit As new consumer markets developed following the Civil War, the advertising trade card met the need for an effective national advertising medium and heralded the arrival of an extraordinary variety of manufactured goods newly available to the American public. An exhibition organized by the Historical Collections Department of Baker Library. Search Catalog records for 1,000 of Baker Library's advertising trade cards, with accompanying digital images, are now available through the Visual Information Access (VIA) system, an online catalog of visual resources at Harvard. Baker Library holds more than 8,000 trade cards representing the full range of products and businesses advertised through this medium from the 1870s through the 1890s.
Reading: Harvard Views of Readers, Readership, and Reading History is an online exploration of the intellectual, cultural, and political history of reading as reflected in the historical holdings of the Harvard Libraries. For Internet users worldwide, Reading provides unparalleled digital access to a significant selection of unique source materials: For researchers, teachers, and students who may not have ready access to extensive historical collections, Reading provides an inspired opportunity to participate more fully in this rapidly expanding research area.
The Rev. Claude L. Pickens, Jr. Collection on Muslims in China Do Not Divide Moslems and Chinese "Along the Old Silk Road to Europe. East Gate, Hao Tien" (CP02.29.03) from The Rev. Claude L. Pickens, Jr., Trip to Northwest China , photograph album, p. [29] Over 1000 photos of Muslims and Christian missionaries working among them in Western China in the 1920s and 1930s form the core of this collection, which is supplemented by several hundred books, pamphlets, broadsides, etc., in several languages. Gift of Rev. Claude L. Pickens, Jr. in memory of Joseph Fletcher Professor of Chinese and Inner Asian History at Harvard University. The albums and photographs can be viewed in the VIA online catalog.
About the Collection The Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature Widener Library Room C, Harvard University Cambridge, MA 02138 (617)-496-2499 This page contains links to narratives about the Milman Parry Collection, information about the Collection's partners/supporters, details on scholarly access to the site, and other information. An Introduction to the Collection "The Milman Parry Collection is the largest single repository of South Slavic heroic song in the world. It comprises the following separate collections.
The public's fascination with the human drama of the courtroom did not begin with Perry Mason or Court TV. Cases involving the relationships between men and women, within or outside the bonds of marriage, have long engaged the popular imagination. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, published accounts of sensational trials provided the public with both entertainment and cautionary tales. Studies in Scarlet presents the images of over 420 separately published trial narratives from the Harvard Law School Library's extensive trial collections.
American Environmental Photographs, 1891-1936 Browse Collection by: Collection Connection Classroom resources for teachers About This Collection The images in the American Environmental Photographs Collection were created by faculty, staff, and students in the Department of Botany at the University of Chicago from the 1890s to the 1930s. Among the most active photographers contributing to the collection were Henry C. Cowles, George D. Fuller, George E. Nichols, Charles J. Chamberlain, Ira B. Meyer, Paul J. Sedgwick, William J. Cribbs, and Ezra J. Kraus. The earliest photographs in the collection were taken in 1891 in the arid desert landscapes of California, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada.
T he Archival Photographic Files document the history of the University of Chicago and the development of its campus, academic programs, and community life. Individuals & Groups Images not yet available online. Images of U of C faculty, students, staff, alumni, administrators, donors, visitors as well as academic and administrative groups, classes, and departments. Buildings & Grounds Images of U of C buildings, campus plans, and surrounding neighborhoods including Hyde Park, Kenwood, and Woodlawn. Events Images of U of C academic, public, and historical events, ceremonies, inaugurations, reunions, and visits of notable individuals.
Chopin Collection The Chopin Collection at the University of Chicago Library The Chopin Collection at the University of Chicago Library consists of over 400 first and early printed editions of musical compositions by Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849). The Collection, maintained in the Special Collections Research Center, includes items within the following scope: The Library continues to acquire items for the Collection that fit the above criteria. The cut-off date of 1881 is used because of the 1878-80 Works , the most scholarly collected edition of the 19th century, published in Leipzig by Breitkopf & Härtel.
A Tale of Two Manuscripts Reunited The Making of the Manuscripts The University of Chicago’s manuscripts of Le Roman de la Rose and Le Jeu des échecs moralisé were produced ca. 1365, about 100 years before the invention of printing. By the 14th century, there was a well-developed book trade outside of monastic scriptoria, supplying Bibles, Books of Hours, or prayer books for private devotion, and other liturgical books; legal, medical, philosophical, and other texts for students; and manuscripts of secular works. Professional trades had developed for each specialized component of manuscript production, including making ink and pigments; preparing parchment from animal skin; and writing and decorating the text by scribes, illuminators, rubricators, gilders; and binders.
About The Collection The Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae is a collection of engravings of Rome and Roman antiquities, the core of which consists of prints published by Antonio Lafreri and gathered under a title page he printed in the mid-1570's. Copies of the Speculum vary greatly in the number of prints, and individual prints were reissued and changed over time. The University of Chicago Library's copy of the Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae contains nearly 1,000 prints and is the largest in the world. The Library's copy arrived in the 1890's as a part of the Berlin Collection, a large lot of books and manuscripts purchased for the Library from S. Calvary and Co. in Berlin.
Search the Collection Advanced Search in Entire Record Title or Type of Text Common Names of Manuscripts Places of Origin or Association Dates of Origin Languages Names of Individuals or Organizations Materials of Construction Imagery Imagery Keyword Books of the Bible and in Entire Record Title or Type of Text Common Names of Manuscripts Places of Origin or Association Dates of Origin Languages Names of Individuals or Organizations Materials of Construction Imagery Imagery Keyword Books of the Bible and in Entire Record Title or Type of Text Common Names of Manuscripts Places of Origin or Association Dates of Origin Languages Names of Individuals or Organizations Materials of Construction Imagery Imagery Keyw
In June 2007, the Penn State University Libraries joined the other members of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) in an agreement to digitize select collections across all its libraries, up to 10 million volumes, as part of the Google Book Search project.
The CIC, the academic side of the Big Ten, is a consortium of 12 research universities including Penn State, University of Chicago, University of Illinois, Indiana University, University of Iowa, University of Michigan, Michigan State University, University of Minnesota, Northwestern University, The Ohio State University, Purdue University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In recent years, scholars in many disciplines have recognized that the literally thousands of engravings, wood blocks, and etchings in emblem books constitute an unparalleled source not only for the study of daily life of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries but also for extraordinary insights into what the intellectuals of the times viewed as a necessary adjunct to heraldry, social life, politics, philosophy, and moral behavior. The English emblem books scanned for this project are cultural artifacts frequently used in the analysis of reading practices, printing history, Elizabethan popular culture, the use of allegory, and the relationship of word to image.
