Lexington Mass. Memories Road Show a resounding success

Volunteers and contributors at the Lexington Mass. Memories Road Show, March 16, 2013

On Saturday, March 16, 2013, as part of the town’s 300th Anniversary Celebration, the Mass. Memories Road Show visited Lexington, Massachusetts, and collected more than 300 photographs and stories from community members about their lives, their families, and their memories of Lexington.

Two hundred and eighty-one community members attended this Road Show event, which was part of series of activities for the LexCelebrate! Incorporation Weekend held at Lexington High School.

The Mass. Memories Road Show is a statewide digital history project that documents people, places, and events in Massachusetts history through family photographs and stories. In partnership with teams of local volunteers, we organize public events to scan family and community photographs and videotape “the stories behind the photos.” The images and video are indexed and incorporated into an online educational database at openarchives.umb.edu.

A Lexington Mass. Memories Road Show contributor, and Battle of Lexington reenactor, describes his photo contribution, sword in hand, to the Mass. Memories Road Show digital archive.

The Mass. Memories Road Show is an initiative of University Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

The photos and stories from the Lexington Mass. Memories Road Show are currently being processed by archives staff and will be available online soon. It typically takes archives staff 2-3 months to fully process and incorporate images and stories into the digital collection.

Keep checking this site for up to date information.

Contact University Archives & Special Collections with any questions.


The Mass. Memories Road Show is a statewide digital history project that documents people, places and events in Massachusetts history through family photographs and stories. In partnership with teams of local volunteers, we organize public events to scan family and community photographs and videotape “the stories behind the photos.” The images and videos are indexed and incorporated into an online educational database. Since its launch, the project has gathered more than 8,000 photographs and stories from across the state. It is supported in part by the Patricia C. Flaherty ’81 Endowed Fund at UMass Boston.  

University Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston was established in 1981 as a repository to collect archival material in subject areas of interest to the university, as well as the records of the university itself. The mission and history of UMass Boston guide the collection policies of University Archives & Special Collections, with the university’s urban mission and strong support of community service reflected in the records of and related to urban planning, social welfare, social action, alternative movements, community organizations, war and social consequence, and local history related to neighboring communities. To learn more, visit blogs.umb.edu/archives.

Archives of an Activist: Celebrating the Donations of Rita Arditti to UMass Boston

Date: Monday, April 22, 2012

Time: 4:00 – 6:00 pm

Location: Joseph P. Healey Library (5th floor), University of Massachusetts Boston, 100 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, MA 02125-3393.

Please RSVP for this event by emailing library.archives@umb.edu or by calling 617-287-5944.

The Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston invites you to celebrate the life and work of Rita Arditti, as well as the many donations made by Arditti and her Executors to the Library at UMass Boston, on Monday, April 22, 2013.

Arditti was an Argentinean professor living in the United States who learned about Las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, pictured above), an organization that searches for children who were abducted during the Argentinean military dictatorship between 1976-1983. Arditti visited the Grandmothers and conducted more than a dozen interviews, which were incorporated into her book Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina. Arditti spoke publicly about the Grandmothers’ work until her death in 2009.

Additional interviews were conducted in 2011 by  Estelle Disch, Rita Arditti’s partner and literary executor. The interview materials were donated to University Archives & Special Collections at UMass Boston in 2011.

Join us for this celebration, which will include an exhibition in the Library’s Grossmann Gallery about the Grandmothers and the disappeared children of Argentina. Speakers will include Estelle Disch, Doris Cristobal, Dean of Libraries Daniel Ortiz, and University Archivist Joanne Riley.

This event is free and open to the public. Refreshments and hors d’oeuvres. Please RSVP by emailing library.archives@umb.edu or by calling 617-287-5944.

For more information, visit blogs.umb.edu/archives.


University Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston collects materials related to the university’s history, as well as materials that reflect the institution’s urban mission and strong support of community service, notably in collections of records of urban planning, social welfare, social action, alternative movements, community organizations, and local history related to neighboring communities.

University Archives & Special Collections welcomes inquiries from individuals, organizations, and businesses interested in donating materials of an archival nature that that fit within our collecting policy. These include manuscripts, documents, organizational archives, collections of photographs, unique publications, and audio and video media. For more information about donating to University Archives & Special Collections, click here or email library.archives@umb.edu.

Introducing Carolyn Goldstein, the new Mass. Memories Road Show manager

We’re delighted to announce that Carolyn M. Goldstein has joined University Archives & Special Collections as Public History and Community Archives Program Manager.

Carolyn is an experienced public historian, having worked as a museum curator at Lowell National Historical Park and the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. Her publications include Creating Consumers: Home Economists in 20th-Century America (University of North Carolina Press, 2012) and Do It Yourself: Home Improvement in 20th-Century America (National Building Museum and Princeton Architectural Press, 1998). Carolyn received her Ph.D. from University of Delaware, where she was a Fellow in the Hagley Program in the History of Industrialization.

One of Carolyn’s primary responsibilities will be coordinating the Library’s public scanning project, the Mass. Memories Road Show. She will also focus on building partnerships with undergraduate and graduate programs on campus, especially the History Department’s Archives and Public History tracks, as well as developing ways to expand the Library’s engagement with and service to local communities.

Upcoming Mass. Memories Road Shows include Lexington, on Saturday, March 16, and Stoughton on Sunday, May 5.

Unveiling the Mercedes Agulló y Cobo Digital Library, an Open Access Week event at UMass Boston

On Tuesday, October 23 from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., UMass Boston celebrates Open Access Week with the unveiling of the Mercedes Agulló y Cobo Digital Library, an ongoing project of the University Library, University Archives & Special Collections, and the University’s Latin American and Iberian Studies Department.

The event will feature light refreshments, as well as remarks by University Librarian Daniel Ortiz and Professor Reyes Coll-Tellechea, among others.

With the Agulló Digital Library, UMass Boston provides open, online access to published and unpublished Spanish-language research indices, the life’s work of Spanish historian Mercedes Agulló y Cobo, about Spanish and Latin American history, art, literature and politics – indices that, in their creation, were efforts to remove access barriers to historical materials in Spanish archives and libraries. The digital library serves as one example of efforts on the UMass Boston campus to further scholarship, learning, and research in open access environments and across geographic boundaries.

There are currently 13 volumes by Mercedes Agulló y Cobo digitized as part of this online collection and more than 50 volumes are queued for digitization.

Dr. Mercedes Agulló y Cobo has served as director of the Museos Municipales de Madrid and over the course of her illustrious career has produced important scholarly reference works in the historiography of the book, painting, sculpture and theater. The University of Massachusetts Boston was granted permission by the original publishers and copyright holders to make these publications available online.

The event will be held Tuesday, October 23, from 5:00-7:00 p.m., in the Center for Library Instruction (CLI) on the 4th floor of the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston, 100 Morrissey Blvd., Boston.

Learn more about the Mercedes Agulló y Cobo Digital Library online at http://openarchives.umb.edu.

For more information about this event, call 617-287-5944 or email library.archives@umb.edu.


University Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston collects materials related to the university’s history, as well as materials that reflect the institution’s urban mission and strong support of community service, notably in collections of records of urban planning, social welfare, social action, alternative movements, community organizations, and local history related to neighboring communities.

University Archives & Special Collections welcomes inquiries from individuals, organizations, and businesses interested in donating materials of an archival nature that that fit within our collecting policy. These include manuscripts, documents, organizational archives, collections of photographs, unique publications, and audio and video media. For more information about donating to University Archives & Special Collections, click here or email library.archives@umb.edu.

Gaining Political Ground in the Twenty-First Century: Latest issue of the Trotter Review available

President Barack Obama and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick

The most recent issue of the Trotter Review, which focuses on issues of the political representation of African Americans in local, state, and national politics, is now available in ScholarWorks, the institutional repository for scholarship and research at UMass Boston.

The Trotter Review has been published since 1987 by the William Monroe Trotter Institute for the Study of Black Culture at UMass Boston.

The contents of this issue include

To view the full issue, and to explore back issues of this publication (which the ScholarWorks team is in the process of posting to the site), click here.

ScholarWorks is the University of Massachusetts Boston’s online, open access institutional repository for scholarship and research. ScholarWorks serves as a publishing platform, a preservation service, and a showcase for the research and scholarly output of members of the UMass Boston community. ScholarWorks is a service of the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston.