Skip to content
Johns Hopkins Sheridan Libraries
Menu
  • Search on the Sheridan Libraries website
  • Search Library Resources (Catalyst)
  • Help & Support
  • Services
    • Borrow and Request Materials
    • Data Management & GIS Services
    • Electronic Theses & Dissertations (ETDs)
    • eReserves & Library Reserves
    • Instructional & Teaching Support
    • Library Events & Workshops
    • Online Services for Teaching, Learning, and Research
    • Research Consultation
    • Scholarly Communication
    • Room Reservations
  • Library Departments
    • Academic Liaison
    • Access Services
    • Center for Teaching Excellence and Innovation
    • Conservation & Preservation
    • Data Services
    • Digital Research and Curation Center
    • Entrepreneurial Library Program
    • External Affairs
    • Human Resources
    • Office of Cultural Properties
    • Special Collections
    • University Archives
  • About
    • Meet the Dean
    • Advisory Board
    • Librarians & Staff Directory
    • Featured Collections
    • Exhibitions
    • News
    • Sheridan Libraries Collection Philosophy
    • Policies and Guidelines for Users
  • Libraries & Hours
    • Milton S. Eisenhower Library
    • Brody Learning Commons
    • George Peabody Library
    • Hutzler Reading Room
    • John Work Garrett Library
    • Visitor Access to MSEL & Brody
  • My Account
  • Give
Hours & Occupancy
Hours & Occupancyhelp
Occupancy Chart
Space Availability: 3.29% full help
At Capacity, No Admission
Make a Reservation
  • Milton S. Eisenhower Library 7:30am - 2am
  • Brody Learning Commons 7:30am - 2am
Search Library Resources

Search

  • Books & Media

    Search for books, music, films, and more from JHU and other libraries

    Catalyst
    Advanced Search - Catalyst
    Advanced Search - WorldCat
    Don't know where to start?
  • Articles

    Search for scholarly articles using a database or Google Scholar. Databases require JHED login.

    EBSCO Databases
    Browse List of Databases
  • Databases

    Search the list of databases available through Johns Hopkins

    Browse List of Databases
  • Research Guides

    Get started by using subject guides compiled by our librarians

    View all Guides
Get Materials

Get Materials

  • BorrowDirect Request books and other items from partner libraries. JHED ID required.
  • Interlibrary Loan Request scanned articles, chapters, and more from non-JHU libraries. JHED ID required.
  • FindIt Look for online journals and periodicals available from JHU libraries.
  • eReserves Access online articles and media reserved for courses.
Learn More about Borrowing and Requesting Materials

Featured Collections

comic book cover of Susy Presenta: Secretos del Corazon
Ephemera

Romance Comic Book Collection

While iconic characters like Batman and Spider-Man were mesmerizing readers, an alternate comic book timeline was booming, featuring the adventures of airline stewardess Bonnie Taylor, tragically unhappy actress Lisa St. Clair, and countless other female characters seeking love and fulfilling relationships in the pages of romance comic books. Popular from the late 1940s to the mid-1970s, romance comic books introduced teenagers to the joys and heartache of love. The Sheridan Libraries holds over 200 issues, including such titles as "Falling in Love," "Girls' Love Stories," "Teen-Age Romances," and "Young Romance."

View selections on Flickr
covers of spanish sueltas
Ephemera

Comedias Sueltas Collection

The Comedias Sueltas Collection is a remarkable assortment of more than a thousand ephemeral editions of Spanish plays from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.

View selections on Internet Archive
Black and white photo of man holding a scientific instrument
Archives

Oral History Collection

Documents the Hopkins history through recordings and transcriptions of interviews with members of the Hopkins community. The collection includes both audio and video interviews, and continues to grow as new oral histories are recorded and added.

View in Catalyst
two renaissance nuns
Ephemera, Manuscripts, Rare Books

Women of the Book Collection

The Women of the Book collection contains more than 425 books, manuscripts, and other printed ephemera produced between 1460 and 1800. The collection centers on the lives of nuns and holy women in Europe and parts of South America and offers a rare look into the lives of early modern women. It includes details of their daily devotions, records of their entrances into convents and religious orders, mystical accounts of their encounters with saints and angels, and even public announcements of their symbolic marriages with Christ. Through their association with the church, these nuns were granted access to tools of the printed word that would enable them to preserve their histories.

View the collection on Internet Archive
antique map detail
Map

John and Linda Greene Map Collection

The John and Linda Greene Map Collection contains over 2,000 maps dating from the 1500s to the present. Its multi-century, global focus makes the collection a particularly rich resource for those who study maps used for diplomacy, education, and news.

View selections on Flickr
Old photo of two people in front of a building on campus
Archives

Historical University Photographs

University Archives holds over 20,000 photographs documenting the visual history of Johns Hopkins University from its founding to present.

View More
Cover of sheet music titled Some Smoke
Manuscripts

Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection

The Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music contains over 29,000 pieces of American popular music from the 19th and 20th centuries.

View More
Archives

Johns Hopkins Biographical Archive

There is a thin evidentiary record of archival materials relating to the life of Johns Hopkins. For years, leaders and community members have centered their story of our founder on his benevolent gift to the city of Baltimore: a university and a hospital, and the accepted narrative that he was an early abolitionist. Under the auspices of Hopkins Retrospective and through the Sheridan Libraries, this archive explores and publicly presents archival materials related to the life of Johns Hopkins and his family, including newly discovered census records that provide evidence that Johns Hopkins was a slaveholder during the mid-1800s.

Explore the archive
Historical illustration of the constellations
Rare Books

The Hinkes Collection of Scientific Discovery

The Hinkes Collection of Scientific Discovery is composed of hundreds of rare books and manuscripts documenting the trajectory of scientific thought from the 15th to 20th centuries. Highlights include the first edition of Galileo’s illustrated treatise on the discovery of sunspots (1613), the first appearance in print of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, in a rare paper printed by the Linnaean Society (1858), and a hand-colored copy of Johann Gabriel Doppelmayr's Atlas Coelestis (1742).

View the collection on Flickr
Still from a black and white video
Archives

Johns Hopkins Science Review

Broadcast to television sets across America from 1948 to 1960, the Johns Hopkins Science review was created by the university to present scientific discovery--in particular the discoveries of Johns Hopkins University faculty--to a popular audience.

View in Catalyst
Ephemera, Rare Books

Women’s Suffrage Collection

View selections from our collection of ephemera, books, and journals documenting the women's suffrage movement in both the United States and England. Materials include publications produced by or in collaboration with pro-suffrage organizations, as well as commercially made items that present a negative or ambiguous message regarding women and voting rights.

View in Flickr
ezra pound the exile
Manuscripts

The Frary Collection of Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound (1885-1972) was an expatriate American poet, literary critic, highly influential figure in the development of Imagism, and a major contributor to the early modernist poetry movement at the turn of the century. This collection of materials, created by or relating to Pound from 1909 to 1986, were compiled by collector and Johns Hopkins alumnus Richard S. Frary.

View in Flickr
john mayden untitled 1977
Photography

John Clark Mayden Collection

Black-and-white street portraits taken over four decades by Baltimore photographer John Clark Mayden, capturing the ordinary joys and sorrows, quiet moments, and daily realities of the city's African American neighborhoods.

View in Flickr
Cover of book titled Bulletin Dada
Rare Books

Exploring the Avant-Garde

Our rare books collection has a strong showing of periodicals and manifestos illustrating major European art movements of the 20th century, such as Futurism, Surrealism, and Lettrism. Of special note is our collection of periodicals documenting Dada, including Bulletin Dada and Z.

View in Catalyst
Rare Books

Bibliotheca Fictiva

Bibliotheca Fictiva: The Arthur & Janet Freeman Collection of Literary & Historical Forgery offers a tremendous overview of literary forgery from the classical age through the twentieth century, including religious texts, "unknown" works by Shakespeare, and histories all meant to deceive the reader.

View selections on Internet Archive
Portrait of Edgar Allan Poe
Exhibition

The Enigmatic Edgar Allan Poe in Baltimore and Beyond

A digital exhibition of books and objects associated with Edgar Allan Poe, highlighting his innovations and breadth as a writer. The exhibition includes rare books, manuscripts, and artifacts from the Susan Jaffe Tane Collection of Edgar Allan Poe.

View Online Exhibition
Ephemera

African American Real Photo Postcard Collection

This collection of approximately 1,018 “real photo” postcards, dating from circa 1905 to circa 1946, portrays African-American individuals, couples, and families. “Real photo" postcards are made from personal photographs printed in tiny editions on postcard stock. In the present collection, a few have been mailed as postcards, with messages and postage on the reverse.

View the collection guide
pooh-scott-collection
Rare Books

The Dorothy McIlvain Scott Collection

Housed at the George Peabody Library, the Dorothy McIlvain Scott Collection is composed of over two hundred books featuring fine binding and fore-edge painting. Hidden renditions of beloved characters like Winnie-the-Pooh, mysterious city views, and scenes of everyday life are revealed to the reader when the text block is carefully fanned out.

View the collection on Flickr
Interior page from the book titled, "Journey of Life, Volume "
Rare Books

Book Arts

Book arts encompass a wide variety of objects, from limited-run pop-up books to one-of-a-kind sculptural pieces. They are represented in our collection by artists such as Julie Chen, Karen Hanmer, and Hanne Matthiesen, as well as from collectives and fine arts presses like Ediciones Vigía, the Women's Studio Workshop, and the Flockophobic Press.

View the collection on Flickr
Cover of book handwritten by Daniel Gilman
Archives

Daniel Coit Gilman Papers

Johns Hopkins University's first president, Daniel Coit Gilman served from 1875 to 1901. Widely regarded as an education innovator, Gilman's pioneering vision established Johns Hopkins as the United States' first research university.

View in Catalyst
Sheet of paper with handwriting
Manuscripts

John Barth Collection

The John Barth Collection, spanning the years from 1930 through 2014, includes a variety of materials such as correspondence, photographs, notebooks, and typescript drafts that document the life and writing process of the National Book Award winning author. Shown here are the manuscript title pages for the novel LETTERS, published in 1979.

View in Catalyst
Ephemera

Birney Anti-Slavery Collection

These anti-slavery pamphlets were assembled by the American abolitionist James G. Birney. The original collection was expanded by Birney's son William to include examples of pro-slavery, African colonization, and campaign literature. The collection spans the years 1784 to 1909, and includes important letters and speeches by key abolitionist figures such as Frederick Douglass, reports by abolitionist societies, and periodicals.

View in Internet Archive
Illustration of a woman in a garden
Manuscripts

Les Fleurs Animées

We have a growing collection of games and pre-cinematic toys that serve to illuminate 19th and early 20th century material culture, such as Les Fleurs Animées (The Animated Flowers). This circa 1850 French paper doll game was inspired by the popularity of J.J. Grandville's caricature book of the same name in which the personalities of society women are associated with flowers. The hand-colored game includes its original box, twelve costumes, and moveable scenery.

View in Catalyst
Cover of book titled Mules and Men
Rare Books

American Literature

American literature is richly represented. Holdings include first, limited, illustrated and special editions of works by major literary figures from the colonial era through the present; correspondence, notebooks and manuscripts of Baltimore and Hopkins-affiliated authors, editors, publishers and critics; works by women, African-American, ethnic, “minor” and “popular” authors; anthologies, textbooks and works of criticism; juvenile literature; broadsides, periodicals and other forms of ephemera.

View in Catalyst
Johns Hopkins University students in ROTC uniform in 1918
Exhibition

Hopkins and the Great War

An exhibition exploring the impact of World War I on the Johns Hopkins community, including members of the Homewood campus, the hospital and School of Medicine, and the School of Nursing. By looking at the lives of students, faculty, and patrons, we can understand the complex and far-reaching ways the Hopkins community both contributed to and was affected by this devastating global conflict.

View Online Exhibition
Book cover with title Peppy Jokes and Latest Sayings
Rare Books

Ottenheimer Joke Books

Baltimoreans Ike and Moses Ottenheimer entered the book trade in 1890, and made a lasting contribution to the study of American humor through their joke books. Featuring colorful covers and priced to sell, their pocket-sized tomes became a hit nationwide. Today, these books are representative of Baltimore's history as a book production center and are rich resources that reveal how humor is used to address social change, from the invention of the automobile to the rise of the flapper.

View the collection on Flickr
A grainy black and white portrait shows Elisabeth Gilman wearing a pince-nez and holding a chow chow
Manuscripts

Elisabeth Gilman Papers

Elisabeth Gilman was much more than just the daughter of founding Hopkins president Daniel Coit Gilman. Social justice advocate, Socialist Party gubernatorial candidate, world traveler, and YMCA wartime volunteer, her life was one of service to her strongly held beliefs. The Elisabeth Gilman papers document her remarkable life through photos, correspondence, diaries, speeches and more.

View in ArchivesSpace
Cover page of the News-Letter from May 20, 1918
Archives

The Johns Hopkins News-Letter

The Johns Hopkins News-Letter is one of the oldest student organizations at the university. Since its founding in 1897, the News-Letter has published news, opinions, literary features, advertisements and more that document life at the university for the past 120 years. This digital collection includes digitized issues of the News-Letter ranging from 1897 to 1990.

View in JScholarship
Illustration of a neighborhood plan
Manuscripts

Roland Park Company Records

The Roland Park Company records document the corporate history of the Roland Park company, which developed the neighborhoods just north of Homewood campus, in the process inventing the modern garden suburb as we know it.

View in Catalyst
Identification document for Isaiah Bowman
Archives

Isaiah Bowman papers

An influential and controversial figure in our university's history, Isaiah Bowman was Johns Hopkins University's President from 1935 to 1948.

View in Catalyst
Cover of book titled Black and Blue Jay
Archives

The Black and Blue Jay

The Black and Blue Jay is a Johns Hopkins University student-run humor publication first published in the 1920s.

View in Catalyst
Archives

The Alfred Dreyfus Collection: Journal Covers

The Dreyfus Collection includes contemporary journals documenting the case. The majority of the examples are from Le Petit Journal, a daily Paris newspaper/magazine founded by Moïse Polydore Millaud, and published from 1863 to 1944. The weekly illustrated supplement of Le Petit Journal depicts events related to the Dreyfus Affair during the period 1897 to 1899.

View the collection on Flickr
Manuscripts

Political Cartoons

Curated by Jesse Chen, JHU Class of 2016

Since the proliferation of Benjamin Franklin’s infamous “Join or Die” drawing in the 1750s, the political cartoon has enjoyed a significant presence in American history and politics. Iconic historical events, figures, and debates have been chronicled through the lens of various cartoonists’ work, serving as a form of documentation, commentary, and in some cases, protest.

View the collection on Flickr
Johns Hopkins Sheridan Libraries
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410-516-8335 (Library Service Desk)
Twitter Facebook Instagram YouTube Flickr
  • Help & Support
  • Librarians & Staff Directory
  • Libraries & Hours
© 2023 Johns Hopkins Sheridan Libraries
  • Privacy
  • Disclaimer
  • All Policies