By: Ashley Kennedy-MacDougall
I began my internship at the City of Boston Archives in September 2015 under the direction of Marta Crilly, Archivist for Reference and Outreach. I was able to work on the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services series from the collection of Mayor Thomas Menino. Boston’s Mayor Thomas Menino (December 27, 1942 – October 30, 2014) served from 1993-2014, and emphasized the importance of neighborhood development and city services to the neighborhoods such as trash removal, plowing, street sweeping, pothole repair. The Office of Neighborhood Services (ONS) was formed to ensure the needs of city constituents were heard and addressed. Each neighborhood of Boston was assigned a coordinator who was involved with addressing and aiding to resolve various types of constituent issues that often required coordination with other city departments such as the Inspectional Services Department and the Zoning Board of Appeals. The coordinators were also involved in the local neighborhood associations and other civic organizations of their area.
The records in this series consisted of paper materials collected by the neighborhoods’ ONS coordinators and included correspondence, meeting notes, minutes, and event plans, as well as materials from various city departments including the Boston Transportation Department, Boston Inspectional Services Department, Boston Conservation Commission, Boston Landmark Commission, and the Boston Redevelopment Authority. The correspondence, fliers, and meeting notes of various neighborhood associations were also included. The dates of the materials ranged from 1987 to 2013, with the bulk of the material falling between 1995-2013.
As Marta had explained to me when I began, some of the materials had been collected directly from the current coordinators’ desks at the end of Mayor Menino’s administration, so the level of organization would vary from box to box. The first order of business was to survey the materials and identify which neighborhood or coordinators they belonged to. This was not too difficult to discern because there were personal notes written on the coordinators’ personal letterhead intermingled with the records. I began processing the materials, which consisted of removing paperclips, flattening brochures or folded papers, re-foldering when needed, flagging for sensitive materials, photographs, or newspaper, and weeding duplicates or unneeded materials such as the coordinators’ handwritten notes and call sheets.
The processing experience differed for each coordinator’s materials – some coordinators were organized and had assembled their materials in labelled folders, other boxes contained piles of unfoldered, loose documents or unlabeled hanging folders. The boxes containing hanging folders required complete re-foldering and dating of the folders, and the boxes of loose materials required me to find an order in the materials and create folder titles and dates. While these materials required the most time to process, having to closely read and inspect the documents was especially interesting as it revealed how local government interacted with its constituents and vice versa.
Once I had completed processing all the neighborhoods’ materials, as well series of street sweeping records, Zoning Board of Appeal records, and architectural plans, all of the boxes were brought out so that I could arrange them in alphabetical order by neighborhood, consolidate neighborhood materials together, and incorporate 7 boxes of previously processed materials from South Boston and Charlestown. This organizing was challenging because there was some overlap in neighborhoods and coordinators, and when there was more than one coordinator over the 18 year span I separated the materials where I could, but this was not always possible. Once the boxes were in order, I began condensing them, pulling materials from the next box into boxes that were not full. I then numbered them, incorporating the previously processed boxes, for a total of 30 boxes, not including the three boxes of materials that were pulled for destruction.
The next step was to enter the folders into Archives Space. This was my first experience with this software, but it was very easy to learn. I would start a neighborhood by creating a subseries which was named after the neighborhood, and assign a date range. The folders titles and date ranges were then entered under their neighborhood. This process also varied from box to box, as the folders I had made were already dated and were much faster to enter then the folders I had to date as I was entering. After entering the folder information I had to go back to each folder to assign it a location in the records room because unfortunately this info wasn’t able to be entered with the initial folder information, so that added time to the process as well. I also created a scope and contents note to the series, which gave an overview of the types of materials contained within the series.
I really enjoyed my experience at the City of Boston Archives. Getting hands on experience is so essential for an archives student because there are some experiences that can’t be relayed through text books. While sorting through the records when I first began was intimidating, after becoming familiar with the materials and the processing experience, I gained confidence in my abilities and knowledge of the series. In time I was able to date folders, pull materials for destruction, and organize the materials into folders with confidence. Gaining experience with the Archives Space software was also important and less difficult than I would have imagined.
I also learned a lot about Boston, local government, and Mayor Menino’s administration. Through these records, Menino’s legacy as a mayor who was dedicated to the growth and improvement of his city and its neighborhoods is reflected. One of the reasons I became interested in archives is the opportunity to learn something new every day, and this experience reinforced that.
