The Sheridan Libraries
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What's Happening
\ At the Libraries
News
Archivists near milestone on processing papers of former Sen. Paul Sarbanes
Sheridan Libraries archivists have processed more than 900 boxes of Sarbanes’ papers, preserving decades of Maryland and U.S. political history for future research
Reimagining Eisenhower Library — Opening Early 2027
A multiyear renovation is transforming Johns Hopkins University’s flagship research library into a vibrant, welcoming hub for 21st-century research and learning.
While construction is underway, library services and study spaces are available in the MSE Library Annex, located in the former Johns Hopkins Club. Additional seating has been added to the Hutzler Reading Room in Gilman Hall and new study space is available in Hodson Hall.
Featured Collections
Explore the treasures of the Sheridan Libraries through highlighted special collections, archival materials, and online exhibitions.
Archives
Ethel Ennis and Earl Arnett Collection
Ethel Ennis (1932-2019) was an acclaimed jazz artist who graced some of the most prominent stages in the nation while maintaining a commitment to her hometown, Baltimore. Her husband and partner, Earl Arnett (b. 1940) is a former Baltimore Sun reporter, theater critic, and instructor at Peabody Conservatory. This extensive collection (155 linear feet) documents their careers, their production company ENE Productions, and their restaurant/cabaret Ethel's Place through recordings, musical arrangements, photographs, artifacts, and other materials.
Archives
American Prison Writing Archive
The United States holds nearly two million people in its prisons and jails—a larger share of its population than in any other nation on earth. Yet there remains widespread ignorance of conditions inside. Amid the unprecedented American experiment in mass incarceration, the American Prison Writing Archive (APWA) hopes to disaggregate this mass into the individual minds, hearts, and voices of incarcerated writers. By soliciting, preserving, digitizing, and disseminating the work of imprisoned people and volunteers, the APWA aims to ground national debate on mass incarceration in the lived experience of those who know prisons best.
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.
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."
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
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.
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.
Archives
Historical University Photographs
University Archives holds over 20,000 photographs documenting the visual history of Johns Hopkins University from its founding to present.
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.
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).
Recent News
Fellow Focus
The Tarot Dilemma, part one
Special Collections First-Year Fellow Suran Gao, who’s planning to major in classics and minor in philosophy and archaeology, delves into the purpose, goals, and intentions of vintage tarot card decks.
Suran Gao, A&S '30February 26, 2026
Fellow Focus
The fire that transformed Johns Hopkins’ libraries, part one
Special Collections First-Year Fellow Nandini Rastogi, who’s majoring in public health and minoring in business and environmental studies, explores the impact of a disastrous fire on the university’s early libraries.
Nandini Rastogi, A&S '29February 20, 2026
On View
With donor support, Homewood Museum exhibition explores house’s past
What makes history? For the 225-year-old Homewood House, the answer lies within the details of the building, says Michelle Fitzgerald, curator of the museum’s current exhibition, “If Homewood’s Walls Could Talk,” on view through January 2027.
Tayjah BrownFebruary 19, 2026