Pictorial Maps of Love and Marriage on Valentine’s Day
Pictorial maps are a genre within the larger field of cartography that present a geographical area embellished with illustrations related to the places shown. The actual locations shown may be imaginary lands, and the pictures could be of people, buildings, historical events, or modes of transportation. The maps might contain humorous or whimsical touches,…
Murder and Mayhem in Massachusetts, February 2, 1934
Leslie Jones Collection “The Leslie Jones Collection is one of the crown jewels of Digital Commonwealth and the Boston Public Library. Jones was a press photographer who worked for the Boston Herald-Traveler from 1917-1956. During his career, he saved many of his negatives, and by the time he died in 1967, he had kept a collection of nearly 40,000 negatives.…
Celebrating Robert Burns
To honor the Scottish poet Robert Burns on his birthday, we present two delicate works of art painted on the fore-edges of books of his poetry. Digital Commonwealth’s Massachusetts Online Collections include Boston Public Library’s collection of Fore-Edge Paintings. The paintings are ”visible only when the pages of the book are carefully fanned, in the…
Where We Are Now
In the last blog post, we mentioned that with more people being vaccinated, crowds would once again be gathering. Not so fast, said COVID. As we enter our third pandemic year now with the fierce Omicron variant infecting even fully vaxxed individuals, we need to re-adjust our activities once again. Additional booster shots will probably…
New Collections Added in May & June
Massachusetts’ high COVID vaccination rate means that gatherings and crowds will once again be a common occurrence. For the best in vintage crowd photography, be it parades, demonstrations, protests and rallies, The Brearley Collection is the place to browse. Recently, some additional images were added to the already voluminous collection of photographs and negatives…
Knapp Family Financial Records
by Anne Berard, Reference & Outreach Librarian, Milford Town Library, member Digital Commonwealth Education & Outreach Committee When I first saw the name of the recently added collection, Knapp Family Financial Records from the Jamaica Plain Historical Society, I must admit I was expecting something else altogether. I thought I might find wills, codicils, estate…