Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Digital Collection

The Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Digital Collection is a multi-year project to digitize the Library's holdings associated with Justice Holmes and his family. Phase I of the project was completed in March 2009 and included:

• Manuscript items related to Holmes’ service in the 20th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment of the Union Army from 1861-1864, including correspondence, telegrams, a diary, and scrapbook.
• Justice Holmes’ annotated copy of The Common Law, his seminal work published in 1881.
• All items in the Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Visual Materials Collection including photographs, etchings, drawings, and paintings of Holmes, his parents Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes and Amelia Jackson Holmes, and his wife Fanny Dixwell Holmes.
• Images of the unique and varied items contained in the Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. object collection including Civil War uniform relics, family and personal effects, and a death mask.

Phase II of the project is in development and will include the digitization of additional manuscript materials and the creation of an interpretive web presentation designed to bring all of the various digitized materials into one place.

Funding for this project comes from a generous gift of HLS alumnus Norman B. Tomlinson (J.D. 1951). Conservation services were provided by the Weissman Preservation Center and contract conservator Paula Artal-Isbrand. Digitization and object photography was provided by Harvard College Library's Imaging Services.

Image credit: Detail, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 1841-1935. Photographs and other images, ca. 1856-1934: Formal portrait, circa 1860, olvwork389552; Lieutenant Colonel Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., copy 3, olvwork385041; Formal portrait of Justice Holmes, 1917, copy 1, olvwork354200; Informal portrait of Justice Holmes, 1926, copy 3, olvwork354147. Harvard Law School Library. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.