Blog

Join York County Audubon and bird watcher Dianne Ballon for readings from the journals of ornithologist William Brewster! This program will be presented in-person in the Mather Auditorium, and will also be live-streamed via Zoom. It will be free and open...

As part of ongoing efforts to make the best use of the stacks space at the Ernst Mayr Library, we will be paring down our excess inventory of both Breviora and the Bulletin of the MCZ . MCZ affiliates may email mczserials@oeb.harvard.edu or drop by the...

Celebrate the beginning of spring semester and the return of the "heartbeat" of the Ernst Mayr Library, the historic tall case clock. Made by Jonathan Mulliken (1746-1782) in Newbury, MA, this clock which belonged to Alexander Agassiz was given to the...

This summer, I had the opportunity to work with Harvard Library as a UX and Discovery intern. This internship program is born out of a partnership between Harvard Library’s UX and Discovery team and the University of Michigan’s School of Information...

By Robert Young, Special Collections Librarian Best known as the Hassler Expedition’s young zoological artist from Provincetown, Blake entered business in early life with his stepfather before deciding to enroll at Harvard’s Lawrence Scientific School in...

By Robert Young, Special Collections Librarian On 29 January 1855, Andrew Garrett, a thirty-one-year-old self-trained naturalist living in Hilo, Hawaii, wrote a letter to Louis Agassiz-- who was soliciting contributions of zoological specimens for Harvard...

Robert A. Gilbert (1870-1942) was an African-American naturalist and photographer, the long-time assistant to ornithologist William Brewster and a staff member of the MCZ. He was an Associate of the American Ornithologists' Union. The MCZ Archives holds...

Join the Ernst Mayr Library and MCZ Archives in a tagging event for MCZ or other FLICKR images from the Biodiversity Heritage Library ! We are celebrating Earth Day by making species images easier to find. The Ernst Mayr Library and MCZ Archives is a...

The Ernst Mayr Library location is currently closed, but the staff are working remotely and available to help. While we cannot access our print collection we recommend the online resources below. Some repositories, such as the Biodiversity Heritage...

The Ernst Mayr Library has digitized more than 56,000 pages of the journals and diaries of William Brewster, a prolific ornithologist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These are mostly handwritten volumes that are not suitable for Optical...