Postcards in the (Home) Archive: Folger Postcards, 1934

April 13, 2021 | By Guest Author

A guest post by Stephen Grant As I set out with “Folger Postcards 1934” to share my personal collection of Folger postcards in a systematic way with all you Collators, I have to pause. Why am I doing this? Yes, due to a) the building renovation, and b) COVID-19, I cannot access the Folger archives. But why has not someone else (until now) taken stock of all the picture postcards produced by or related to Folger—exterior, interior, artifacts—and the wealth of information one can gain from them?… Continue Reading

Play it again, Ham

April 6, 2021 | By Rachel B. Dankert

As a Folger staff member, I am used to seeing Shakespeare’s face everywhere, but the image from this month’s Crocodile Mystery made even me do a double take. This month’s mystery was a stumper! The Hamlet behind Shakespeare/Yorick was Edwin “Eddie” Foy, a famous comic performer of the vaudeville era. Of all the roles available to a performer in Foy’s irreverent domain, it is curious that Hamlet is the one that haunts this jokester’s career.… Continue Reading

“What manner o’thing is your crocodile?”: April 2021

March 30, 2021 | By The Collation

Never smile at a crocodile…mystery, that is. Especially when Shakespeare looks this shocked. Which 20^th century performer is holding Shakespeare’s terrified, Yorick-ified head? If you’re not too scared, leave your guesses in the comments below and come back next week for the answer!… Continue Reading

Documenting mistakes in our documentation

March 23, 2021 | By Erin Blake

If someone points out a typo in an online Finding Aid or a Hamnet catalog record, we gratefully say thank-you, fix it, and (usually) move on. Sometimes, though, a big enough mistake has been around for a long enough time that we can’t just move on. We have to take extra steps to find the source of the mistake, and make sure its ghost doesn’t come back to haunt scholarship.… Continue Reading

Pre-pandemic phone photo fails

March 19, 2021 | By Heather Wolfe

As we hit the one year mark of special collections reading rooms closing around the world because of the pandemic, “primary source research” for many of us now consists of scrolling through our phones in search of photos of collection items from early 2020, the last time many of us set foot inside a reading room. While my daughters no longer complain, “Ugh, Mom, why do you have so many pictures of dumb manuscripts on your phone?,”… Continue Reading

Making Rum in Unexpected Places

March 9, 2021 | By Guest Author

Note from the editors: we are testing a new image viewer in this post, and there are some bugs still to work out. If any of the images aren’t loading for you and you see a blank box instead, try clearing your browser’s history/cache and refreshing the page. A guest post by Jordan Smith For many US-based academics, late February/early March marks the one-year anniversary of our last taste of normalcy.… Continue Reading

Marks on Bindings

March 3, 2021 | By Caroline Duroselle-Melish

Thank you for your witty guesses to this month’s Crocodile, they are great! I also need to make a disclaimer: I am far from having collected enough evidence to answer this mystery, so like you, I only have guesses to offer and they may not be as funny as yours… Like many of you, I’m leaning towards the hypothesis that this book was used as a board mat to cut something (most likely paper).… Continue Reading

“What manner o’thing is your crocodile?”: March 2021

February 23, 2021 | By The Collation

We’ve come full circle—it’s (almost) March again. Or maybe it’s always been March? Instead of breaking your brain wondering how that can possibly be, here’s a new crocodile mystery to ponder: can you guess what happened to this binding and why there are cuts on it? Leave your guesses below and as always, we’ll be back next week with the answer.… Continue Reading

Postcards in the (home) archive: Meriden Gravure Co. postally unused postcards with messages

February 18, 2021 | By Guest Author

A guest post by Stephen Grant Gentle readers, we are now somewhat familiar with Meriden Gravure Co. postcards. Perhaps we had never paid attention to them before. In this post we will look at five Meriden postcards which contain interesting information handwritten on them, but which do not bear a stamp, postmark, or destination. I believe this is the first postcard I’ve shared with you from the Meriden Gravure Co.… Continue Reading

24,000 “preliminary” catalog records are better than nothing!

February 16, 2021 | By Erin Blake

At least, we hope the approximately 24,000 “preliminary records” added to the Folger’s online catalog yesterday are better than nothing, which is what Hamnet had for most of these books since going live in 1997. Today’s Collation post explains where this big batch of records came from, and how to navigate their perils and pitfalls if you come across them in your research.… Continue Reading