Category Archives: Special Collections

Exhibition features interviews, photographs about Las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo

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On Monday, April 22, 2013, University Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston opened an exhibition in the Library’s Grossmann Gallery about the history and work of Las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo).

The exhibition, titled “Nunca Más”: Niños Desaparecidos en Argentina y Las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (“Never Again”: Disappeared Children in Argentina and the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo), opened as part of an event celebrating of the life and work of biologist and human rights activist Rita Arditti and the many donations made by Arditti and her Executors to the Library at UMass Boston.

The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo is a human rights organization founded in 1977 to search for disappeared children who were abducted or born into captivity during the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1983. The Grandmothers’ goal was to find these children and return them to their biological families. The Grandmothers’ work led to the creation of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team and the establishment of a National Genetic Data Bank.

In the early 1990s, Arditti traveled to Buenos Aires to interview the Grandmothers. She incorporated the interviews into her book Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina (1999). Two additional interviews with the Grandmothers were conducted in 2011 by Estelle Disch, Professor Emerita at UMass Boston and Executor of the Estate of Rita Arditti.

The Rita Arditti Collection contains audio files, interview transcriptions, and photographs of the Grandmothers. The materials were donated to University Archives & Special Collections at UMass Boston in 2011.In this exhibition, sponsored by University Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston, are photographs of the Grandmothers who were interviewed by Arditti and Disch. Accompanying each photograph is an excerpt from that Grandmother’s interview in the original Spanish as well as an English translation.

The exhibition will be on display in the Healey Library’s Grossmann Gallery through the fall.

Explore this collection at openarchives.umb.edu.

For additional information, email library.archives@umb.edu or call 617-287-5944.

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.

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

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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.

Snow, sledding, and Thompson’s Island

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A residential school for boys was located on Thompson’s Island from 1833 until 1975. In 1907 the name of the school was changed to the “Farm and Trades School” and in 1955 to “Thompson’s Academy,” a college preparatory school for urban boys that closed in 1975.

Since 1988, “the island’s Board of Trustees has partnered with Outward Bound to operate the island, creating Thompson Island Outward Bound Education Center. The island continues its mission to serve underprivileged Boston youth with programs that instill teamwork, self-confidence and compassion, and that encourage learning-by-doing.” (http://thompsonisland.org/about/history/)

This digital exhibit includes a sampling of some of the photographs and visual material from the UMass Boston Thompson’s Island archival collections, which contain thousands of photographs, publications, school records and documents spanning 175 years.

Explore this collection of photographs and documents from Thompson’s Island.

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.

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

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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.

Library establishes Community Archives Award with event, launches exhibition

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From left to right: University Librarian Daniel Ortiz, TIARA presidents and past-presidents Judy Barrett, Janis Duffy, Kathy Roscoe, and Mary Choppa, with University Archivist Joanne Riley

On March 14, 2012, the Joseph P. Healey Library at the University of Massachusetts Boston presented the first annual Joseph P. Healey Library Community Archives Award to The Irish Ancestral Research Association, or TIARA, for their work rescuing and preserving the historic records of the Massachusetts Catholic Order of Foresters. On the significance of these records, Joanne Riley, University Archivist for UMass Boston, notes that “for many genealogists, history buffs, and Irish families, the Foresters records are a treasure trove of ancestral information.”

Several members of TIARA and the Catholic Association of Foresters were in attendance, as were members of the general public and representatives from programs at UMass Boston. The Award was presented at a reception featuring music and storytelling by Nora Dooley and Susan Miron, and a presentation by TIARA member Susan Steele on what the Foresters records reveal about Massachusetts and U.S. history. In one example, Steele discussed the 1919 death of Foresters member James Lennon who, according to his death certificate, died as a result of the “bursting of molasses tank” in the Great Molasses Flood of 1919, an event that resulted in the deaths of 21 people and injured 150.

The evening also featured the opening of an exhibition by Archives & Special Collections at UMass Boston. “Calling the Heart Back Home: Irish-American Stories from the Archives” features images and information about the history of the Massachusetts Catholic Order of Foresters (now called the Catholic Association of Foresters) and the genealogically and historically significant information contained within the Foresters records, as well as a range of Irish-American stories as seen through archival images and documents from Archives & Special Collections at UMass Boston.

In 2011, TIARA donated the records of the Massachusetts Catholic Order of Foresters to Archives & Special Collections at UMass Boston and with the acquisition of these records, the department formally launched their Community Archives initiative, with the intention of, said University Archivist Riley, “creating a space where community-based history and archives groups can engage with, learn from, and preserve materials of historical value to their own organizational missions and objectives.”

Archives & Special Collections at UMass Boston collects materials that reflect the University’s urban mission and strong support of community service, notably in collections of records of urban planning, social action, alternative movements, community organizations, and local history related to neighboring communities, including the Boston Harbor Islands.

This event was sponsored by the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston, with the financial assistance of the Catholic Association of Foresters.