Category Archives: University Archives

WUMB-FM Collection: Now open for research

Date
Posted by
Comments0

The WUMB-FM collection is now open and available for research. This collection, one of the largest in University Archives & Special Collections at UMass Boston, documents the administration and operation of the WUMB radio station at the university from 1969 through 2012. WUMB boxes

WUMB was founded in the fall of 1968 by a group of undergraduate students in the basement of the Sawyer building at 142 Berkeley Street in Back Bay, near UMass Boston’s original Park Square campus. The founding group wanted to provide a radio service that was not available elsewhere, and discussed offering not only music but talk shows.

On October 31, 1968, students formed the Radio Station Committee of UMass Boston and drafted a constitution. The committee consisted of a chairman, vice-chairman, treasurer, and secretary, which were elected each April. Pat Riccio (Monteith), interested in getting involved in university activities as a freshman and a member of the radio station’s founding group, would serve as treasurer, secretary, music director, and, finally, as general manager until 2012.

The station began as a closed-circuit station called WUMB-AM and went on the air for the first time on December 14, 1969. By 1970, it was broadcast within the cafeteria on campus on Monday through Friday from 8:30 am to 4:00 pm, except during vacations, reading periods, and exams.

On June 30, 1980, the station received the last Metro-Boston area FM license from the Federal Communications Commission and became UMass Boston’s official non-commercial radio station. On September 19, 1982, WUMB officially went on the airwaves with an all-student and volunteer staff, broadcasting to an audience of 1.5 million people. The license was received after years of numerous amendments and resubmittals of lost information, as well as some objections from other commercial and non-commercial radio stations in the area. The license was made possible with support from Chancellor Carlo Golino and his chief of staff, who was an attorney, advocating for the radio station in written letters. Read more about the history of WUMB-FM in the historical note section on page two of the finding aid.

Massachusetts House of Representatives Anniversary Award, circa 2002
Hand puppets from Adventures of Zorba (the cat) and Koffie (the mouse), a children’s show on WUMB circa 1970-1979
Program Information Sheets, 1983
Boston Folk Festival posters, circa 2000-2007

The WUMB-FM collection includes original and photocopied documents, official records (constitution, minutes, by-laws), mimeograph copies, Ditto copies, notes and correspondence, playlists, program guides, surveys, listener correspondence, performance agreements, newspaper articles, lyrics, promotional materials, photographs, contact sheets, slides, negatives, CDs, cassettes, VHS tapes, and more.

Some digitized reel-to-reel audio from the WUMB collection is available through the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (WUMB and UMass Boston are listed among the America Archive’s participating organizations) by clicking “view all records” here. Materials from the collection that may also be of interest to researchers include the records on the Boston Folk Festival, which was organized by WUMB-FM from 1995 to 2011. This series includes documents on festival planning, songwriting contest lyrics, photographs, posters, and promotional materials.

Read past Open Archives News posts about the WUMB-FM collection:

View the finding aid for the WUMB-FM collection here.

For questions about this collection or to schedule a research appointment, please contact library.archives@umb.edu or 617-287-5469.

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.

Processing*: The benefits of sharing in the archival profession

Date
Posted by
Comments2
Processing Manual for Archival and Manuscript Collections, by Meghan Bailey, Jessica Holden, and Joanne Riley

Processing Manual for Archival and Manuscript Collections, by Meghan Bailey, Jessica Holden, and Joanne Riley

During my time as the processing archivist in University Archives & Special Collections at UMass Boston, I’ve been working hard to ensure our processing* procedures reflect current professional standards and are efficient and consistent. To that end, I led the department in the development of a processing manual to assist students, interns, and volunteers, as well as other library and archives staff, with archival processing projects. Importantly, my colleagues Jessica Holden and Joanne Riley played pivotal roles in preparing, testing, and championing the development of this manual – not, I should add, a quick and easy undertaking!

(*Processing is the term archivists use to describe the work of making a new collection ready and available for access to researchers, students, and staff. Donated collections often come to the repository in disarray. Boxes and folders are unlabeled, disorganized, and dusty, and may contain duplicate materials and personally identifiable information. It is the archivist’s job to ensure ease of access, and to assimilate the historical relevance and material content of the collection and communicate this knowledge in the finding aid for researchers.)

As part of keeping tabs on activities in the archival professional community, I am a member of the NEAdiscuss listserv, a listserv created for the New England archives community to encourage communication and announcements pertaining to the profession.

Last week, I noticed an email come through the listserv inquiring about processing plans and workflows. Immediately after this email, several other members of the listserv responded, indicating their interest in this information.

At the University of Massachusetts Boston, we are fortunate to have ScholarWorks, an open access digital repository for scholarship and research by faculty, staff, and students at the university and managed by staff in the Joseph P. Healey Library. We had been planning to post the manual to ScholarWorks for some time and this exchange on the NEAdiscuss listserv moved us to action.

After posting our processing manual to ScholarWorks on February 11, I forwarded the link to my colleagues in listserv-land. To my surprise, the manual was downloaded 35 times in 24 hours and, as of today, the manual has been downloaded almost 50 times!

The importance of sharing ideas, workflows, and practices in the archival profession cannot be understated. It encourages collegiality and limits the duplication of effort, ultimately advancing the profession. This is especially important as archivists forge ahead with the digitization of archival collections. As nerdy as it may seem, our seemingly obsessive, hyper-vigilant focus on processes and workflows is essential to providing access to archival collections for communities of researchers, students, faculty, and staff.

I welcome any feedback or thoughts on our department processing manual. The manual will be updated periodically, as our work processes evolve to support current and new materials. Please check ScholarWorks for the most updated version.

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.

University Archives & Special Collections hosts resident from National Digital Stewardship Residency program

Date
Posted by
Comments0

ndsr-bostonGuest post by Jeffrey Erickson

I’m Jeffrey Erickson, a recent graduate of Simmons College’s School of Library and Information Science and a former IT professional. I am currently a resident with the National Digital Stewardship Residency program working on digital preservation for University Archives & Special Collections (UASC) in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston.

The National Digital Stewardship Residency program (NDSR) places five information professionals in cultural heritage institutions in the Boston area to gain instruction and hands on experience in digital stewardship issues by working on real-world projects. This is the second year that the NDSR program has hosted projects in the Boston area. NDSR programs are also taking place in New York City and Washington D.C. For more on the NDSR Boston program, please visit the NDSR Boston web site.

As a digital archivist, I am interested in combining my technical skills with my training in archival practices and methods and applying them to digital stewardship issues to ensure our digital cultural heritage remains available for access and use to future generations. The NDSR program and the project here at UMass Boston are providing a platform for me to pursue this interest.

The project I am working on examines the current practices in place at UMass Boston for capturing and managing the assets in digital collections and developing workflows and procedures aimed at providing the long-term preservation of these materials using cloud-based storage services. University Archives & Special Collections at UMass Boston has a growing collection of digital materials. I will be applying the digital preservation workflows to the materials in the Mass. Memories Road Show collection as a pilot program for preserving all the department’s digital collections.

MMRS_filmstrip_long_greyThe Mass. Memories Road Show (MMRS) is an ongoing community-based digital humanities project conducted by UMass Boston since 2004. The goal of the project is to collaborate with Massachusetts cities and towns to organize community-building events where images and stories that document the history of Massachusetts through the eyes of its residents are collected one town at a time. To learn more about the Mass. Memories Road Show project, click here.

Last month I attended the most recent MMRS event on Martha’s Vineyard to gain an understanding of how the digital objects in this collection are captured and created. Preserving digital materials begins with their creation so I was fortunate that a Road Show event was scheduled to take place during the early part of my residency. You can read more about my MMRS experience on the NDSR Boston blog.

dp-word-cloudSo, why should you be interested in my project? The answer is two-fold:

  1. Because the success of my project will develop a foundation of understanding and practice that will ensure that the digital resources of this university will remain accessible and useful for years to come.
  2. Because everyone has personal digital assets that require preservation. And, everyone can benefit from developing an understanding of the issues that affect digital materials and some best practices that address these issues.

I encourage you to check back to this site from time to time, as well as the NDSR Boston blog. I will keep you up-to-date on the progress of my project, discuss some digital stewardship issues, and maybe pass along some information that will help you preserve your own digital assets.

In the Archives: Women’s Studies Program Records

Date
Posted by
Comments0
Women's Studies course listing brochure, 1981-1982.

Women’s Studies course listing brochure, 1981-1982.

Women’s Studies emerged in the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s as a national curriculum and higher education institutional reform movement that addressed issues of gender bias, gender inequality, and sexism in the academic canon and society at large. One of the first Women’s Studies programs in New England was founded at UMass Boston. In the late 1960s, UMass Boston students, faculty, and staff organized a Women’s Association that addressed a variety of feminist issues.

International Women's Day reception flyer, March 1983.

International Women’s Day reception flyer, March 1983.

Faculty in the humanities and social sciences developed courses focused on women and gender. In 1972, a student-faculty committee proposed a Women’s Studies concentration, and the group gathered hundreds of signatures in support of this proposal on a petition to the University Assembly and UMass Boston administration. In 1973, the proposal was approved, and in the fall of that year, the 18-credit interdisciplinary concentration was official.

Over the years, the Women’s Studies faculty at UMass Boston grew, and a bachelor’s degree in Women’s Studies was proposed in the late 1980s. Chancellor Sherry H. Penney championed the B.A. program during her first year at UMass Boston in 1988, and the program was approved by the Board of Regents in 1989. That fall, Women’s Studies offered a major and minor, but remained as a “program” in order to encourage faculty across disciplines to participate in curriculum development and teaching. The program became a department in 2006, and is now the Women’s and Gender Studies Department.

Founding program faculty members Ann Froines and Jean Humez, circa 1998.

Founding program faculty members Ann Froines and Jean Humez, undated.

From the 25th anniversary commemorative booklet, Women’s Studies at UMass Boston Celebrates 25 Years, 1973-1998, a note from Program Director Jean Humez:

The program has grown and evolved in many ways in this quarter century. We grew to five full-time faculty lines; we evolved from a concentration into a full-fledged academic major (with a minor); and we have continued to develop our curriculum in response to new student and faculty interests (always constrained by resource realities, of course!). Through all the changes, we have remained dedicated to the best goals of feminist education, still enunciated in our handbook:
• To bring the history and critical perspectives of women of different cultures, races, and social classes into the university curriculum;
• To stimulate and support new, nonsexist research and writing on women and gender by students and faculty;
• To help promote a nonsexist university environment.

Women's Studies newsletter, 1981.

Women’s Studies newsletter, 1981.

University Archives & Special Collections holds the records of the Women’s Studies Program from 1972-2006. The records document the program’s governance and growth, including faculty appointments and student enrollment; curriculum development; and special projects and associated organizational work. Formats include proposals, by-laws, meeting minutes, budget information, correspondence, curricular materials, and publications.

View the finding aid for the Women’s Studies Program records here. Browse publications by the Women’s and Gender Studies Department here.

For questions about this collection or to schedule a research appointment, please contact library.archives@umb.edu or 617-287-5469.

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.

University of Massachusetts Boston: Human Rights Working Group Records – Now open for research

Date
Posted by
Comments0

Guest post by Kristen Weischedel

human rights

University Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston is pleased to announce that the records of the Human Rights Working Group at the University of Massachusetts Boston are now open to researchers.

This relatively small collection, one linear foot, chronicles the evolution of the University of Massachusetts Boston’s Human Rights Working Group, which was created in March 2001 with the goal of establishing a human rights minor and center at the university. The group also worked to collaborate with communities outside UMass Boston, bringing activism to the campus and campus activism to the greater community.

This collection reveals daily activities of the organization from 2001 to 2006. Included among these materials are research, petitions, correspondence, mission statements, and meeting documents, which provide unique insight into the workings of this important student and faculty collaboration.

View the finding aid for this collection.

For questions about this collection or to schedule a research appointment, please contact library.archives@umb.edu or 617-287-5469.

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.