Archives – Public History at UMass Boston

March 27, 2025Julianna Kramer No Comments

Getting Started in Archives: An Interview with Jennifer Pelose

By: Isabella Rozzi

^{Plan of Harvard College buildings, 1784, by student Joshua Green. Harvard University Collection. Harvard University Archives.}

Jennifer Pelose has spent time working her way up and around Harvard’s archival repositories since finishing graduate school in 2002. Starting as a grant processor in Harvard’s Countway Library, to her current position as head archivist in charge of archival projects and technical services at Harvard’s University Archives, Pelose has learned a lot of lessons and has wisdom to share about the field.

While getting an undergraduate degree in history, Pelose had an active role in editing and writing for her college’s student newspaper, but after working in an archive she got a new perspective that she felt better suited her. Archival work matched her personality as someone who liked quiet environments behind the scenes, rather than “in the public eye.” Jennifer knew she did not want to be a teacher and thought she could a place in library sciences. Pelose attended Simmons College in Boston, where she received. Her Masters in Library Science and an MA in History.

We got to talking about trends and movements across the field. Pelose identified the More Product Less Process movement, a phrase coined by Mark Green and Dennis Meissner in their article by that same name, for its importance in the field. The article called for archivists to reconstruct the way they process their collections by focusing on reducing backlog and opening collections rather than describing their contents at the item level. Pelose says this article caused quite the movement and continues to do so today. Pelose cited the article as “a lightning rod” for the time, changing to minimal processing and getting collections out there for the public, even if it meant reducing user services. It also shifted resources to public services rather than processing archivists, another big change. Pelose told me she’s known people who have shown up for their first day of work to find a copy of this article sat waiting for them on their desk. Still, despite having embraced this movement in her past positions across different archives, Pelose considers this only one “method,” suggesting that it’s best to look at the needs of the individual archive rather than adhere to a movement.

Pelose also addressed the movement towards digitization; the “digital tsunami,” she joked, is here.. The rush to digitize introduces more challenges in making highly requested records available, such as the WWII records at Harvard. Digitization has forced archivists to start thinking differently about their collections. She says archivists need to treat these records as if they are any other record, but then the added perspective of putting them online. The Harvard University Archives, according to Pelose, plans to have their entire backlog, including all twenty repositories of the university, processed by 2026. Digitization is a great start for making Harvard’s previously restricted records more accessible.

^{Letter from John Hancock to Mrs. Mary Hancock, 1754 May 1. John Hancock Collection. Harvard University Archives.}

On a more personal level, I asked Pelose to share her favorite object or collection that she has worked with. Delighted, Pelose identified two documents, both relating to founding father, John Hancock. She mentioned the letters between him and his sister around the time of her engagement, which revealed typical brother-sister bantering. Hancock complained that his sister hadn’t told him about her engagement in time, and then signed the bottom of the letter with his famously large signature. Pelose laughed and said he must’ve been practicing. She said her other favorite collection were those of Hancock as Harvard’s treasurer during the American Revolution. At that time, he had brought all of the finance books from the university to Philadelphia. This collection reveals that the University sent Hancock letters begging him to pay attention to the books and to pay people accordingly. Unfortunately, John Hancock never answered. Perhaps, Pelose suggested, Hancock was too occupied to care. She said she loved the records of a man having to go to Philadelphia on horseback, take the records from him, and then establish a new treasurer.

Talking to Jennifer Pelose gave me a great opportunity to learn about the journey of an archivist, from the day-to-day to the looming trends and movements within the field as well as the personal narrative of an individual in the field. Pelose’s reflections offered important insight to how career archivists work and think about their and think about their work in the field, and it only made me more interested in the possibility of working in archives. My conversation with Pelose was useful for a brief discussion of Library Science vs. Public History in archives that we had in my class, HIST 626, Introduction to Archives. Pelose also reassured me that many of her colleagues, past and present, have come from Public History; Archives is not an exclusive club.

Tags: Archives, Archives Student, Informational Interview, Jennifer Pelose, Harvard University Archives, More Product Less Process, Library Science

July 28, 2022Rebecca M Beit-Aharon 1 Comment

The People’s Congressman: Joe Moakley’s Mission for Peace and Justice in El Salvador

By Laura Kintz

My name is Laura Kintz, and I designed an Omeka site, THE PEOPLE’S CONGRESSMAN: JOE MOAKLEY’S MISSION FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE IN EL SALVADOR, as my capstone project for the Archives Track of UMass Boston’s History MA program.

The goal of my site is to display and contextualize archival materials that document Congressman John Joseph Moakley’s important work related to issues in El Salvador during that country’s civil war from 1979 to 1992, especially his career-defining leadership of the “Moakley Commission:” a congressional task force that investigated the 1989 murders of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter. This project reflects my interests in both 20^th century American history and issues of archival access.

Congressman Moakley (1927-2001) was a Democratic South Boston politician whose career spanned the second half of the twentieth century. His papers are at Suffolk University in Boston, which is both my alma mater (BS in History, 2006) and Moakley’s (JD, 1956). The John Joseph Moakley Archive and Institute (JJMAI) at Suffolk University has digitized thousands of Moakley Papers documents, including hundreds relating to El Salvador, for use by off-site researchers; these are accessible via their online catalog. Fifteen years after his death, though, Moakley’s work related to El Salvador remains largely unknown. With one exception (Moakley’s biographer, Mark Schneider), historians have largely ignored Moakley and his career as historical subjects. The wealth of materials available in the Moakley Papers begs for further research, and thus far, no one has mined these materials and presented them digitally in a cohesive way. My goal in creating a digital exhibit is to change that. The site allows historical researchers and members of the general public to learn about a politician who worked tirelessly to help the victims of Salvadoran injustice.

This site includes a short sketch of Congressman Moakley’s life and career, as well as a timeline of El Salvador’s history, with a focus on the years of the civil war. The “Archival Materials” section comprises the bulk of the exhibit; it features correspondence, memoranda, press releases, government documents, reports, photographs, and other pieces of evidence that chronicle Moakley’s introduction to El Salvador; immigration reform; the 1989 Jesuit Murders and the Moakley Commission; the end of the civil war; and Moakley’s legacy. An “Oral History” section includes transcripts of interviews with Moakley’s family, friends, colleagues, and even with Moakley himself. A final section includes a bibliography and notes on copyright.

In crafting my site, I had nearly 500 digitized archival documents at my disposal. These represent only a small portion of the total number of documents in the Moakley Papers, but nonetheless provide significant insight into Moakley’s career. I selected documents that best support the overall narrative of Moakley’s work and then divided them into categories that reflect the general trajectory of this work. The narrative contextualizes the documents, but the documents also speak for themselves. Each document has its own accompanying identifying information, or metadata, that provides further details, including a general description of the document. In some instances, for presentation purposes, I have divided multi-page documents into separate PDFs; I have noted these instances in the metadata for the relevant files.

My work on the site aligns with my main goal as an archivist, which is to uncover history by providing access to primary sources.The complicated nature of Moakley’s work and of El Salvador’s history in general made this process challenging at times. Given these complexities and my desire to present the material in a succinct and readable way, there are certain aspects of Moakley’s work and El Salvador’s history that this site does not cover. The primary source documents that I have contextualized nonetheless illuminate the unceasing efforts of a United States congressman whose commitment to human rights in El Salvador defined his career and is an example to citizens of today’s world, politicians and civilians alike.

I would like to the staff, past and present, of the Moakley Archive and Institute for all the wonderful work they have done to digitize Congressman Moakley’s papers. This project would not exist without their commitment to providing access to their materials. I would especially like to thank archivist Julia Howington, whose advice and assistance were invaluable as I worked on this digital exhibit.

I would also like to give very special thanks to my advisor and mentor, UMass Boston Archives Program Director, Dr. Marilyn Morgan. Without Dr. Morgan’s encouragement, I may not have realized that archives are my true calling. Dr. Morgan’s support not only helped me create this exhibit, but also helped me learn how to be an archivist, and for that, I am immensely grateful.

Finally, I would like to thank my family, friends, and fellow students for all of their support during my graduate career. I would like to dedicate this exhibit to my husband, Rob Kintz, without whom I never would have been able to start, let alone finish, graduate school. He has always believed in me, and for that, I cannot thank him enough.

July 28, 2022Rebecca M Beit-Aharon 1 Comment

A Curatorial Tagging Case Study of the Blackwell Family Papers Digital Collection; Or, Making the Case For Archival Performance Transparency

By Katie Fortier

My capstone project uses the Blackwell Family Papers Digital Collection (BFPDC) as a lens through which to examine issues of archival performance transparency or pertinent contextual information that could enhance access points to digital collections.

Archivists have traditionally viewed themselves and their institutions as objective and impartial presenters of documents. In more recent decades, some have debated the agency and mediation that they practice in their profession, in terms of appraising, arranging, and describing archival records. Some have pushed the debate further, arguing that archival users should be more involved in these processes, particularly by generating descriptive metadata, as a complement or alternative to traditional taxonomies and controlled vocabularies, which some archivists have more recently scrutinized.

Philosophical discussions revolving around archival transparency address several issues; for instance, what are the means by which archivists explicitly outline their archival decisions and intentions? What role do archives play in constructing cultural memory and power? Can providing additional contextual information about archival methodologies prove useful to researchers? Can including additional context prove beneficial to archivists themselves by serving as an administrative tool? Lastly, and perhaps most difficult to assess, when instituting new practices, like tagging digital collections to enhance transparency and accessibility, is it possible for an archivist to consciously document his or her own biases?

In 2012, Schlesinger Library initiated a tagging project to enhance access and create new pathways between records in the extensive collection that had been fully digitized in 2014. The process and challenges encountered in tagging the BFPDC—inconsistency, the lack of objectivity, and the uneven distribution of curatorial tagging—provide insight into social experiments in archival description. Creating and applying tags to provide contextual information aptly highlights issues related to descriptive practices in general. My capstone outlines the type of information that the project generated and attempts to evaluate its usefulness. It also highlights the anxieties of tagging in this fashion in light of postmodern theory and its application to archival theory, particularly archival description. It argues for the transparency of descriptive practices as a means of communicating to users important contextual information about the custodial history of archival records, including trying to articulate the combinations of different methodologies with which archivists applied curatorial tags. It finally produces several decision-making documents that one might feature on their digital online collections, to aid researchers in understanding the way in which they are seeing digital materials.

Within the past 20 years, several archivists have made calls for contextual documentation of manuscript collections but a nomenclature for this action has yet to be standardized. My capstone uses the term archival performance transparency to describe a document or a set of documents that relay, explicitly, information outlining one, some, or all of these processes: custodial history of records; appraisal, processing, and descriptive decision-making (of the archivist and/or the repository); documentation strategies; archival methodologies; and personal or institutional biases. Archival performance transparency derives from the work of Terry Cook and Joan M. Schwartz who insist that “the archivist is an actor, not a guardian; a performer, not a custodian.” Archival performance transparency entails providing contextual information related to collections; it does not relate to discussions regarding the transparency of organizations and citizens’ abilities to access records.

My capstone builds upon the work of Michelle Light and Tom Hyry who, in 2002, appropriated the term colophon for the field of archives. The finding aid colophon, serving as an addition tacked onto a finding aid, translates into words the inevitable subjectivity of the archivist’s choices when making appraisal and processing decisions. At present, few, if any, archives or repositories have put the idea of a finding aid colophon into practice. My capstone proposes a reimagining of the colophon for the digital collections environment; an environment where digital records often suffer from lack of context. Using the Blackwell Family Papers Digital Collections as a case study, my project argues that the transmission of records from its original finding aid to its representation in an online digital collection environment necessitates the creation of a series of digital collection essays. Digital collection essays can be defined as archival performance transparency tools to be applied to an online digital collection that describe the transmission and representation of digital archival records. These essays integrate archival performance transparency as well as educational and navigational information to breathe new life into the archival colophon.

June 1, 2022Jane S Becker No Comments

Boston Teachers Union Collections (2022)

Since 2018, UMass Boston historians, archivists, and students have partnered with the Boston Teachers Union (BTU) to archive, explore, and share the union’s history and the experiences of its members in Boston Public Schools since 1945. Thus far, our collaborations have included a participatory archiving event at the union hall, an ongoing oral history project, the digitization of the archives of the union’s newspaper, the Boston Union Teacher, and the transfer of the union’s documentary archives to UMass Boston. These newly accessible materials are being used in BTU organizing trainings, contract campaigns, and internal research, and by UMass Boston students in coursework and capstone projects. In Spring 2022, graduate students in Prof. Nick Juravich’s “Digital Public History” course organized the launch of these collections, along with a companion website they built and a library research guide. This project remains active!

September 12, 2019Jane S Becker No Comments

1919 Boston Police Strike (2019)

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On September 9, 1919, more than 1,100 City of Boston police officers walked off the job to fight for union recognition and improved working conditions. In the days that followed, they lost their employment and public sympathy, and Boston’s streets erupted in lawlessness and riots. The replacement police workers hired in the wake of the strike received the concessions that the strikers were denied, while the fired police officers were left without jobs and unable to find employment in Boston. The strike was one of the most dramatic incidents in Boston’s history, and had long-lasting local and national political impact, including helping to catapult Calvin Coolidge into the U.S. Presidency.

University Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston launched the 1919 Boston Police Strike Project to document and preserve the stories of the more than 1,100 police officers who were involved in this highly influential labor strike. By September 9th, 2019–the centennial of the strike–the team will have compiled an online biographical database documenting each of the officers who went out on strike, for the benefit of researchers, historians, students and others, including family members of the strikers.

In Spring 2019, graduate students in HIST 625 “Interpreting History in Public: Approaches to Public History Practice” partnered with UASC to document the participants in the 1919 strike, its impact on the city, and and explore the ways that the Boston Police Strike of 1919 has been remembered by descendants, and the public. Our historical research and interpretation will require us to consider questions such as: How we can understand this local event in the context of broader local and national histories? What are the histories of individual strikers? How did their participation shape their personal and family histories? How did strikers function within the local and police communities? How have the strikers’ descendants remembered the strike? How did organized labor respond to and understand the strike, and how did they publicly acknowledge it? What is the meaning of this event today? To whom does the history of this strike matter?

Public History students contributed to the Boston Police Strike website in multiple formats. They wrote brief biographies of strikers based on material in the striker database and other primary sources; created a digital map of the 1919 strike, using images and text that incorporates various perspectives on key places prior to, during, and just after the strike; collaborated with strike descendants to document family stories and memories of the strike and impact on their family/community; and explored primary sources to understand public commemorations and interpretations of the strike by labor and non-labor perspectives. All of these endeavors found its way onto the Boston Police Strike website and is available for public use.