Manuscript Digest – February/March 2021 – This complimentary e-digest, now published bi-monthly, covers significant acquisitions and sales, manuscripts lost and found, rare books and ephemera, document conservation, and more. […]
Collecting Conversations: An Interview with William Fliss, Archivist of Special Collections and University Archives at Marquette University. Curator, J. R. R. Tolkien collection Kevin Segall William Fliss, Archivist of Special Collections and University Archives at Marquette University. Curator, J. R. R. Tolkien collection J.R.R. Tolkien Collection - Marquette [...]
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens has acquired the personal papers of Thomas T. Eckert (1825–1910). Left: “…get hold of Edison & keep him,” urged a promoter of Thomas Edison’s quadruplex telegraph to Thomas Eckert, president of the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Co., in 1876. Thomas T. [...]
William Henry Dorsey William Henry Dorsey was an African American of means who lived in 19th-century Philadelphia. Like many others of his generations, he was bitten by the collecting and archiving bug. The son of Thomas Dorsey, an enslaved man who fled bondage in Maryland and secured his freedom in [...]
For everyone who has every collected books, stamps, coins and certainly manuscripts you remember the moment. You make one purchase and find an additional surprise. So it was for in William Leslie in 2014. With time on his hands, a visit to an old bookstore. Then a thin paper [...]
Lincoln's Inaugural Photograph - May 4, 1861 Iconic photo of Lincoln’s first inauguration. Now believed to be taken by government photographer John Wood. LOC “The avenue in front of the portico was thronged with people, the crowd extending to a great distance on either side and reaching far [...]
UFO Documents released After decades of Freedom of Information requests, approximately 2,780 pages of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents detailing the government entity’s findings on unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are now available for anyone to read and download. For UFO devotees this is an opportunity to see all of the [...]
Robert Caro (center), James Hicks and Debra Schmidt Bach of NY Historical Society. Jonah Markowitz/New York Times Robert Caro Archives Early last year the New-York Historical Society arranged to acquire Robert Caro’s substantial archives. It includes the files for his Lyndon B. Johnson masterwork and for “The Power [...]
Enslaved: Peoples of the Historic Slave Trade, launched at the end of 2020. Joining with seven smaller, searchable databases, Enslaved.org allows anyone from academic historians to amateur family genealogists to search for individual enslaved people around the globe. All in one location. Enslaved.org, “will revolutionize our access to the past [...]
The Library of Congress recently completed a major digitization effort. The collections of 23 U.S. presidents' papers are now available online. From left: Calvin Coolidge, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Benjamin Harrison and Thomas Jefferson; behind: Jefferson's June 1776 draft of the Declaration of Independence (Illustration by Meilan Solly / [...]