Category Archives: Events

Thursday, Oct. 30 – I Can See For Miles: The Past, Present, and Future of the Nantucket Field Station

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Nantucket Field StationWhen: Thursday, October 30, 2014 | Noon – 2:00 pm

Where: Campus Center, 3rd floor Ballroom, section C (3550C), University of Massachusetts Boston

Light lunch and refreshments will be provided.

The Nantucket Field Station was donated to the University of Massachusetts in 1963 and became a part of the teaching and research activities of UMass Boston when the university first opened its doors in 1965. At this event, part of celebrations around UMass Boston’s 50th anniversary, speakers will discuss the early history of the Field Station, as well as current and future teaching and research activities on the island.

Nantucket Field StationSpeakers include:

  • Richard Gelpke, Professor of Geographic Science (retired), UMass Boston
  • Sarah Oktay, Director of the Nantucket Field Station, UMass Boston
  • Special guest lightning-round panelists, each charged with briefly describing their work with the Field Station, include Ginger Andrews, who has a family connection to the Nantucket Field Station; Robyn Hannigan, Dean of the School for the Environment; Jim Lentowski, Executive Director of the Nantucket Conservation Foundation; Conevery Valencius, Associate Professor of History; Jack Wiggin, Director of the Urban Harbors Institute; and Roberta Wollons, Chair and Professor of History.

Light lunch and refreshments will be provided.

Free and open to the public. RSVP to library.archives@umb.edu.

Learn more about this event here.

Co-sponsored by the School for the Environment, the Nantucket Field Station, the Urban Harbors Institute, and the Friends of the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston.

For disability-related accommodations, including dietary accommodations, please visit www.ada.umb.edu two weeks prior to the event.

Book Reading and Reception: A People’s History of the New Boston

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People's History of the New BostonWhen: Thursday, October 16, 2014 | 3:00 – 5:00 pm

Where: Point Lounge, Campus Center 3rd Floor, on the campus side, University of Massachusetts Boston

Join the Friends of the Joseph P. Healey Library for a reading from and reception for Jim Vrabel’s new book, A People’s History of the New Boston, published by UMass Press. Barbara Lewis, director of the William Monroe Trotter Institute, will introduce the author.

Books will be available for purchase, and refreshments will be served.

Although Boston today is a vibrant and thriving city, it was anything but that in the years following World War II. By 1950 it had lost a quarter of its tax base over the previous twenty-five years, and during the 1950s it would lose residents faster than any other major city in the country.

Credit for the city’s turnaround since that time is often given to a select group of people, all of them men, all of them white, and most of them well off. In fact, a large group of community activists, many of them women, people of color, and not very well off, were also responsible for creating the Boston so many enjoy today. This book provides a grassroots perspective on the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s, when residents of the city’s neighborhoods engaged in an era of activism and protest unprecedented in Boston since the American Revolution.

Using interviews with many of those activists, contemporary news accounts, and historical sources, Jim Vrabel describes the demonstrations, sit-ins, picket lines, boycotts, and contentious negotiations through which residents exerted their influence on the city that was being rebuilt around them. He includes case histories of the fights against urban renewal, highway construction, and airport expansion; for civil rights, school desegregation, and welfare reform; and over Vietnam and busing. He also profiles a diverse group of activists from all over the city, including Ruth Batson, Anna DeFronzo, Moe Gillen, Mel King, Henry Lee, and Paula Oyola. Vrabel tallies the wins and losses of these neighborhood Davids as they took on the Goliaths of the time, including Boston’s mayors. He shows how much of the legacy of that activism remains in Boston today.

Jim Vrabel is a longtime Boston community activist and historian. He is author of When in Boston: A Time Line & Almanac and Homage to Henry: A Dramatization of John Berryman’s “The Dream Songs.”

For disability-related accommodations, including dietary accommodations, please visit www.ada.umb.edu two weeks prior to the event.

UMass Boston Archives staff give presentation at Society of American Archivists annual meeting

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Joanne Riley, University Archivist and Curator of Special Collections in the Healey Library at UMass Boston (left) and an SAA conference attendee discuss the department's poster.

Joanne Riley, University Archivist and Curator of Special Collections in the Healey Library at UMass Boston (left), and SAA conference attendee discuss the department’s poster.

Last week, archivists from University Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston headed to Washington, D.C., for the joint annual meeting of the Council of State Archivists (CoSA), the National Association of Government Archives and Records Administrators (NAGARA), and the Society of American Archivists (SAA). On Thursday and Friday of this year’s conference, called ARCHIVES*RECORDS: Ensuring Access, Andrew Elder, Jessica Holden, and Joanne Riley presented as part of the professional poster session on our efforts to establish successful ongoing relationships with community archives and organizations.

SAA PosterOur poster, titled “University Archives and Community Organizations: Ensuring Access through Collaboration,” looks closely at our ongoing relationship with The Irish Ancestral Research Association (TIARA) and our collaborative efforts to preserve and provide access to 79,000 mortuary records from the Massachusetts Catholic Order of Foresters. Elements of the collaboration included shifting stewardship of the records from the Foresters to TIARA to UMass Boston, integrating TIARA’s efforts in processing and indexing the records into the Archives’ workflow, providing in-person and electronic access to the records, and hosting public events that celebrate the partnership and educate the public about the records. This poster illustrates the lessons learned during the records’ journey from an active business to a community organization to an archives and special collections department at a large, public research university.

View the poster and handout here.

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.

Mass. Memories Road Show in the news, accepting applications for 2015

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Carolyn Goldstein, interviewed on Chronicle for the Mass. Memories Road Show.

Carolyn Goldstein, interviewed about the Mass. Memories Road Show as part of an episode about UMass Boston for WCBV Boston’s Chronicle. Click the image to view the video.

The Mass. Memories Road Show was featured last week on WCBV Boston’s Chronicle as part of a segment produced on the occasion of the university’s 50th anniversary. The episode included photographs from the collection and recorded footage from a number of Mass. Memories Road Show events, including last year’s stops in Lexington and Provincetown.

Are you interested in bringing a Road Show to your community? We are now seeking applications for events to be held in 2015. The deadline to apply is July 25, 2014, and applicants will be notified in early September. Click here for information about how to apply, or email carolyn.goldstein@umb.edu with any questions.

Volunteers and contributors at the Lexington Mass. Memories Road Show

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

Mark your calendars for our next two events in two Boston neighborhoods:

Allston-Brighton Mass. Memories Road Show
Veronica B. Smith Multi-Service Senior Center
20 Chestnut Hill Avenue
Sunday, October 26, 2014

West End Mass. Memories Road Show
West End Museum 
150 Staniford Street
Saturday, November 15

 

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.

 

Historian and UMass Boston alumnus Anthony M. Sammarco ’79 publishes Lost Boston

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With Lost Boston, historian and UMass Boston alumnus Anthony M. Sammarco ’79 takes readers on a nostalgic journey back in time to visit some of Boston’s  disappeared buildings and places in all their grandeur, before the wrecking ball and decline set in. For information about upcoming book talks featuring Sammarco, click here.

From the 1870s up to the present day, 68 different losses are represented in Lost Boston, including schools, churches, theaters, grand mansions, dockyards, racetracks, parks, stores, hotels, offices, and factories. Organized chronologically starting with the earliest losses and ending with the latest, Lost Boston features much-loved institutions that failed to stand the test of time, along with old-fashioned hotels and sports facilities that were beyond updating or refurbishment. Losses explored include Franklin Place, Boston City Hall, Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Hancock House, Gleason’s Publishing Hall, Fort Hill, Franklin Street, Boston Coliseum, Boylston Market, Merchants Exchange, Haymarket Square, Boston Public Library, Horticultural Hall, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Revere House (Hotel), Huntington Avenue Grounds, Charlestown City Hall, Molasses Tank, Cyclorama, Readville Trotting Park and Race Track, East Boston Airport, Boston Latin School, East Boston Ferries, Braves Field, Massachusetts State Prison, Boston Opera House, Boston Aquarium, The Howard Athenaeum, and Dudley Street Station.

Well known locally for his community service in disseminating local history, Anthony M. Sammarco has donated his archives to University Archives & Special Collections in the Healey Library at UMass Boston. Sammarco intends to donate a copy of Lost Boston, along with his research materials and photographs, to University Archives & Special Collections.

For information about upcoming book talks featuring Sammarco, click here. Books will be available for purchase for $18.95 at these events and will be signed by the author.