With a sheet music mapping project in the works (stay tuned!), I decided to spend this week combing the Levy Sheet Music Collection in search of maps. One of the first songs that caught my eye when looking for maps in the collection is the Atlantic Telegraph Schottisch. This stunning lithograph cover was done by […]
One of the greatest movies to come out of the 1990’s was Hocus Pocus, with Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy. From Binx the talking cat to the iconic “I Put A Spell on You” dance scene, the movie has become a cult classic—and although we’re far from Halloween, I thought I’d spend […]
Over the past year, the pandemic has given me plenty of time to re-watch all of my favorite movies. In revisiting Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The Sound Of Music, I rediscovered the delightful puppet show set to a song called “The Lonely Goatherd.” Inspired by this adorable scene (and because everybody loves puppets), I thought I’d […]
Working with historic sheet music, I come across autographs almost every day. This doesn’t surprise me, as most of the books on my own bookshelf have my name written inside. Likewise, sheet music was intended to be used frequently, making the contents of any historic sheet music collection far from ‘mint condition.’ Instead, most of […]
Though the project now known as the Digital Library of Medieval Manuscripts (DLMM) originated at Johns Hopkins University back in 1996, it has not suffered the same fate as so many other “legacy” digital humanities initiatives. Rather than gathering dust and lapsing into obsolescence, the DLMM continues to improve and innovate in ways that would […]
Growing up in Arizona, my family would often travel out East to visit relatives. A highlight for me was always New York City, where I developed my childhood love of skyscrapers and fear of pigeons– whether they were coming after the soft pretzel I was eating or shoving each other in front of trains (don’t […]
Enjoy this post by Ankita Sen, one of our Special Collections Freshman Fellows for the 2020-2021 academic year! My name is Ankita Sen and I am a first year student from Princeton, New Jersey. I am double majoring in Classics and International Studies, with a minor in Museums and Society. I have studied Latin for […]
Enjoy this post by DJ Quezada, one of our Special Collections Freshman Fellows for the 2020-2021 academic year! Since I began this project three months ago, I have embarked on a similar journey to that of the mapmakers I have spent the last several months studying: synthesizing information about places (or in this case, time […]
As the curator of the Lester Levy Sheet Music Collection, a phrase I hear often is “I didn’t know sheet music could be used to study…” Levy collected 30,000 songs over 50+ years not to perform, but to use as a lens for studying history. To make this easier, Levy organized his collection by subject, […]
Do you miss great coffee? Great news! Beginning Monday, March 15, the Daily Grind’s BLC Café in the Brody Learning Commons will be open to current Johns Hopkins faculty, staff, and students for grab-and-go food and drink. Café hours: Monday – Friday, 8:30am to 4:30pm Saturday – Sunday, 10am to 4pm Order and pay online […]