“Cuban American Activists Connecting to Cuba” – panel discussion at the Joseph P. Healey Library

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Members of the "Brigada Antonio Maceo" in Cuba

Members of the “Brigada Antonio Maceo” in Cuba

The Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston, in partnership with Casa de las Americas, Havana, Cuba, is archiving documentation of the “Movement in support of Cuba by members of the Cuban diaspora in the U.S., Puerto Rico & other countries (1960s-1990s).”

Members of the Antonio Maceo Brigade & other Cuban diaspora activists defied Cold War political and family prohibitions to return to Cuba beginning in 1977, changing U.S./Cuba dialogues and their own lives.

On Wednesday, March 23, 2016, participants in the movement in support of Cuba participated in a panel discussion at the Healey Library titled “Cuban American Activists Connecting to Cuba: Enduring Impacts on U.S. Cuba Relations”.  Panelists included Miren Uriarte, Mariana Gaston, and Manuel Gomez (members of the Antonio Maceo Brigade), who reflected on their experiences and engaged in lively dialogue with the audience, which consisted of students, faculty, staff and community members. UMass Boston Provost Winston Langley, Dean of Libraries Daniel Ortiz, and University Archivist Joanne Riley, who traveled to Cuba in early 2016 to work out a collaborative agreement with Casa de las Americas, shared news of the archiving project underway at Healey Library.

This event was co-sponsored by the Office of the Provost, the Joseph P. Healey Library, and the Graduate program in Transnational Cultural & Community Studies (TCCS) at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

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 heads to Spencer on Sunday, April 3

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Spencer MMRSWhen: Sunday, April 3, 2016 | 10:00 am – 3:00 pm

Location: Spencer Memorial Town Hall | 157 Main Street | Spencer, Mass. Click here for directions.

Do you have a connection to Spencer, Massachusetts? Do you live or work in Spencer? Are your roots in Spencer? Share your memories and take your place in Massachusetts history at this free, public event.

Please bring 1-3 photos in their original format (digital or print photographs) and your stories to be recorded. We will scan unframed pictures and copy digital images and return the images back to you. All images will be added to the online collection at openarchives.umb.edu.

The planning committee for the Spencer Mass. Memories Road Show has created a Facebook page for the event, which includes information for contributors and volunteers.

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.

The Mass. Memories Road Show is produced by the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston and is co-sponsored by the Patricia C. Flaherty ’81 Endowed Fund.

Local funding for the Spencer Mass. Memories Road Show is provided by Spencer Cable Access.

Download the flyer for the Spencer Mass. Memories Road Show here and remember to share it with your friends and family members!

WUMB-FM Collection: Now open for research

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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.

Winter 2016 issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy available on ScholarWorks

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Winter 2016 NEJPP Cover_v1 (1)--REVThe most recent issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy is now available on ScholarWorks, the open access repository for scholarship and research out of UMass Boston.

Describing the topics explored in this issue, journal founding editor Padraig O’Malley writes: “Along with two literary essays, the articles in this issue of the journal address local, national, and international public policy questions. On the literary level, one article discusses whether arguments from an older era over a white writer’s presumption that he can accurately articulate black voices and experiences, itself an unconscious bias, can throw light on racial issues roiling college campuses and other arenas of public discourse today; the second, more mellow and reflective, ponders the incongruities and congruities that surface when the author explores how the meaning of the word home depends on one’s personality as he prepares to move his family back to Massachusetts, where he grew up. Three examine questions germane to Massachusetts: one on media bias leading up to the referendum in Massachusetts on bilingual education, a second on equality of compensation among teachers in different communities in the state, and a third on racial, ethnic, and gender diversity in the workplace. On the national level, one article looks at biases that explain why black women enlist in the U.S. military at higher rates than other ethnic and racial groups. And, finally, two articles on the international level. One discusses the urgent need to reorient long-term U.S. foreign policy objectives; the other makes an important contribution to understanding what might lie ahead in Iraq, if ISIL is defeated—sobering and rarely discussed.”

The New England Journal of Public Policy has been published since 1985 by the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Full issues of the open access journal are available on ScholarWorks.

In addition to the introductory note by journal editor O’Malley, who is also the John Joseph Moakley Distinguished Professor of Peace and Reconciliation at UMass Boston, the contents of this issue include:

To view the full issue, and to explore back issues of this publication, 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.

Processing*: The benefits of sharing in the archival profession

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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.