Each year, Harvard Library’s Pforzheimer Fellowships provide an opportunity for graduate students to work on a library project with a librarian or archivist. This Fellowship offers a chance for recipients to learn about library careers, advance their own research skills, and get to know a library from the inside.
WADSWORTH HOUSE: ITS HISTORY AND PEOPLE
C.R. Elliott, PhD candidate – History
Harvard University Archives
Library mentors: Sarah Martin & Ginny Hunt
Wadsworth House is the second oldest surviving building on the Harvard campus. Built in 1726, it has been a home, workplace, meeting location, and even temporary lodging for a wide variety of individuals who passed through the space where Harvard University now stands. The focus of the project was to uncover as much of the underrepresented histories of people who worked, lived, stayed at, and built Wadsworth House. From the land acknowledgement of where Wadsworth house sits (on the ancestral land of the Massachusett) to early accounts of the College to Alumni Bulletin publications, this project unearthed greater information about the history of the building. A final report was created from these findings for the Marshal’s Office, which currently occupies Wadsworth House, which will be made public for use by visitors to the University, students, faculty, scholars, and the general public interested in the campus.
THOMAS JACOBY PHOTOGRAPHS OF EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCHES OF SYRIA
Lauren Ehrmann, PhD candidate – History of Art and Architecture
Johannes Makar, PhD candidate – Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
Fine Arts Library
Library mentor: Nicholas Roth
The Thomas Jacoby photographs of Early Christian Churches of Syria constitute a collection of roughly 3000 images of some of the earliest surviving Christian architectural monuments, located primarily in Syria. Taken in the 1970s, they represent a unique archive documenting important sites that have been frequently at risk and difficult to access due to conflict in the region in more recent years.
Johannes and Lauren focused on the cataloguing practices around this collection by correcting metadata, updating transliterations of geographic metadata and adding in Arabic names for included locations. Through their work, they identified over six hundred images already digitized and began creating a CURIOSity online exhibition for the collection.
GEOSPATIAL DATA AND ARCHIVAL RESEARCH
Ana Luiza Nicolae, PhD candidate – History of Science
Harvard Map Collection
Library mentor: Belle Lipton
The Harvard Map Collection stewards and provides access to over 11,000 digital datasets via the Harvard Geospatial Library. This project focused on creating structured geospatial datasets from information found in materials in the Harvard Library system, which will support research related to geographical contexts. Ana Luiza took this geospatial project even further, focusing on the decline of geography as an academic field at Harvard. Using archival material available at the Schlesinger Library, Harvard-Yenching Library, Frances Loeb Library, the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, and University Archives, she enhanced the accessibility to this information through cataloguing and linked everything in a guide map. Through her work, she surfaced several case studies that further explain the history of this curricular change at the University. Learn more here.
CELEBRATING THE RADCLIFFE CHORAL SOCIETY AT 125: AN ARCHIVES-FOCUSED EXHIBIT
María Alejandra Privado, PhD candidate – Ethnomusicology
Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library
Library mentor: Christina Linklater
2024-2025 marks the 125th anniversary of the Radcliffe Choral Society, a treble choral ensemble founded at Harvard University in 1899. The Radcliffe Choral Society aims to foster the appreciation and enjoyment of women's and treble choral music through the commission of new works for soprano-alto voices, high-caliber performances, and domestic and international travel, striving to honor its history and further its legacy.
The Loeb Music Library will celebrate this student run and managed group’s jubilee year with a special exhibit guest-curated by past and present Society members. María Alejandra conducted research on the Choral Society using archival documents from the University Archives and Schlesinger Library. This research resulted in the creation of a timeline for the group’s existence, including a pre-selection of over five dozen items that Privado believes will best illustrate the group’s history for the exhibition.