Digital Archives – Public History at UMass Boston

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Blackwell Family Papers Digital Collections

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.

Internship: Archives, Virtual Reality, and the Preservation of Memory

November 9, 2021 / Heidi Gengenbach / 0 Comments

By Meghan Arends

Technological advancements present new opportunities within education, both in classrooms and in public settings. The world of Virtual Reality introduces a unique method of interaction with history, something that has inspired Greenhouse Studios at the University of Connecticut. One of their most recent projects, temporarily titled “Courtroom 600,” is an educational experience that combines the video game technology and archival sources to give players a firsthand look at the Holocaust and the Nuremberg Trials. By using actual evidence and testimony documented from the case, Greenhouse Studios aims to present the historical truth to students, museumgoers, and gamers in an effort to keep collective memory of the Holocaust alive at a time most paramount.

I began working with the Courtroom 600 team as a graduate archives intern this past summer. Since the internship was remote, my work focused on digital archives rather than within a traditional repository. I previously had very little experience in the field of digital archives, but with the help of my supervisor, I became well-versed in metadata, Optical Character Recognition, or OCR, and HOCR. This is because the game uses documents from the Thomas J. Dodd Papers, held at the UConn Archives & Special Collections, to narrate the story of the Holocaust. Players will discover these documents as clues in the game, building the story as they go. These documents will need to be collected and interpreted for the sake of gameplay, and the program will link players to each document’s original listing on the digital repository. Therefore, I was editing useable and searchable data to prepare these documents for use within Courtroom 600.

A comparison between the OCR generated by Tesseract and the corrected product. German names were often difficult for Tesseract to recognize, and inconsistencies in the typewriter’s printing created numerous errors. This image comes from a presentation I gave at the CTDA Annual Meeting in June.

OCR is essentially a transcript of what is on a document. The University of Connecticut Archives & Special Collections uses a program called Tesseract, which reads each page of an archived document and generates a read-out of the text. This transcript is then visible to users of the digital repository within the book viewer of the document. Meanwhile, HOCR is an HTML version of OCR used to make a document searchable. HOCR doesn’t just read what’s on the document; it maps out the content, generating bounding boxes around each word to highlight searches. As we learned over time, OCR and HOCR both generate from the original object but do so separately. We were unable to find a way to intertwine the editing processes, so I had to use an XML editor to display and edit the HOCR. The issue with automatically generating OCR and HOCR is that they’re not always accurate, especially when originating from documents created on older technology like the typewriters used during the trials. Errors typical to typewriters (i.e., letters typed over letters to correct typos and mechanical issues) create errors in the transcripts.

Unlike computers, we can recognize the actions and errors of other humans. Approximately half of my time during this internship was spent correcting the OCR. This was done within Islandora, the program used to build the digital repository, and was relatively simple. It was tedious at times, especially when an error was continuously made during the original generation, but that time was mostly spent correcting typos and focusing on consistency for line spacing and the characters used. This was a learning process, as we were still just experimenting within the program. The other half of my time was then spent updating the HOCR, though not just the typos. The bounding box coordinates had to be checked and adjusted to create an accurate map of the page. I also helped update descriptive metadata for individual pages, once again aiding their searchability, but the main purpose of this internship was to help develop and streamline the editing process so that it could be passed on to future interns and assistants with near flawless execution

An example of HOCR being edited in Notepad++, an XML editor. The numbers proceeding “bbox” correspond to the word’s position on the page, creating a box to highlight each word during a search

OCR and HOCR exist for an important reason: to make archival sources fully accessible to researchers. These documents are supposed to provide an enriching experience to gameplayers, who are meant to interpret the sources to fully understand the gravity of the situation. The HOCR obviously has to be accurate to what is on each page to make it searchable. If it isn’t edited and is instead left with numerous errors that come from computer generation, the search feature becomes inoperative and pointless. Leaving inaccurate OCR just creates confusion and inconsistency. As I learned, the necessity of accuracy holds greater significance than just providing tools for use. With this internship, I witnessed the practical application of archives and the significance they can provide. One of the primary purposes of archives is to preserve historical truth for future generations to utilize. Archives are essential keepers of public memory and can be vital tools for communities, educators, and activists. The job of the archivist is to preserve and document these truths and to aid researchers in its discovery, or rediscovery. To provide any information to the public that is not truly accurate to the original source is to provide false information.

There is, unfortunately, a deeply rooted history of denial when it comes to the Holocaust. Despite best efforts to punish those who committed such atrocities, anti-Semitic sentiments always linger. When I ponder the importance of Courtroom 600 and these documents, I think of swastikas spray-painted on walls, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and the tragic vandalization of monuments meant for mourning. These documents are actual evidence used during the trials. They are representations of the truth that historians and archivists are continuously working to keep within the light to work against misinformation and hate. Editing metadata and transcriptions is necessary; to provide anything less than full accuracy is a misrepresentation of the truth. Even if it’s out of pure ignorance, it is alteration of the facts. My job was certainly to make research easier for users of the repository and to prepare a polished product for use in the game, but my job was to also ensure that, no matter what public users look at or what feature they use, the truth of what occurred during that period would be visible. I learned during this internship that within archives, there’s a responsibility to the moral significance that comes with accessioning and processing historical artifacts. Each step of the archival process must consider what each artifact represents to specific groups. Doing so only helps to serve the communities we help preserve.

Upper left: an example of the documents I worked with. Upper right: an example of what OCR looks like from an editor’s point of view. Lower left: Search results using HOCR mapping. Lower right: Text transcript of document generated by OCR. Images courtesy of the Connecticut Digital Archive.

Ventress Memorial Library, Marshfield, MA

Mass. Memories Road Show: A First-Time Roadie’s Reflection

April 2, 2018 / Heidi Gengenbach / 0 Comments

By: Violet Hurst

On Saturday, October 28, 2017, my phone rang out its shrill, soul-crushing alarm at 7:00 AM. And then 7:05. 7:10.

At 7:45, I dragged myself out of the safety and coziness of my bed, threw on clothes, and placed an On-the-Go Dunkin Donuts order for a large coffee while brushing my teeth.

“Add a turbo shot?” the app asked me. I hit yes and dashed out the door, pulling on my shoes as I ran.

What was I, a twenty-two year-old graduate student, doing waking up so early the morning after a friend’s Halloween party—my first day off in weeks? Driving an hour to volunteer at a public history event, of course!

The Mass Memories Road Show at UMass Boston is an event-based public history project that digitizes family photos and memories shared by the people of Massachusetts. Road Show volunteers work with members of the local community to organize a free public event where residents can contribute their photographs to a digital archive. To date, the project has digitized more than 6,000 photographs and stories from across the state, creating an educational resource of primary sources for future generations. On October 28, 2017, I volunteered at the project’s event in Marshfield. It was my first Road Show, and despite having attended a training session, I had no idea what to expect.

Ventress Memorial Library, Marshfield, MA

Carolyn Goldstein, the Public History and Community Archives Program Manager at UMass Boston’s Archives and Special Collections, greeted me with a smile when I walked through the doors of Marshfield’s Ventress Memorial Library. She directed me to a medium-sized community room, where I saw volunteers of all ages milling around, chatting with one another and setting up their stations. Members of the local community had turned out in force, each excited to take an active role in documenting the history of their community. Several were elders with long memories of Marshfield’s history; some were history buffs; a few were even volunteers from other towns who had volunteered in previous Road Shows. I sat down at my designated station next to an affable woman named Maureen. She and her husband had moved to Marshfield the year before, hoping that a house by the beach would entice their grandchildren to visit more often. She had come to the Road Show because she wanted to become more involved in her new community, and to learn about its history in the process.

As we waited for participants to arrive, Maureen and I went over our responsibilities. Our task was simple: we were to help participants fill out a form for each one of their photographs. We would ask them to title and describe their own photographs and to identify any relevant people, places, and events they captured. We were to allow people to tell their own stories, and to record the meanings that they assigned to each photograph. Our role was to listen, not to shape, suggest, or revise.

Throughout the day, I was privileged to meet and serve many members of the community, and to learn about their diverse experiences as residents of Marshfield. I saw pictures of family homes, children’s weddings, vacations, and old-time local businesses. A woman laid out three pictures before me that comprised six generations of her family. A widow came with her daughter to make sure a photograph of her husband’s old five and dime store made it into the archive. Two of Marshfield’s town historians wanted to scan the cover of their first book. “Don’t worry,” they told me when they learned that I was in a history MA program, “You can make a living doing history—we sure have!”

All day long, I was humbled by the knowledge that participants were allowing me an intimate glimpse into their hearts and minds. They were showing me the people and places that they valued most in the world- memories held so dear that they were worth preserving for future generations. This was, truly, something special.

It is an unfortunate but undeniable reality that archival repositories—digital and not—tend filled with records of the powerful. Their materials disproportionately focus on the lives of white men, the wealthy, the healthy, the well-connected. Those who lack privilege are chronically underrepresented in archival collections, and, too often, that absence leads to an erasure from history. Projects like the Mass. Memories Road Show, which empower people to construct their own archives, tip the balance of power by allowing ordinary people to shape the historical record. They gather together a wealth of material that the historians of the future can draw upon to construct a richer, more complete picture of the past.

And that’s worth getting out of bed on a Saturday morning.

The next Mass. Memories Road Show will be in Amesbury, MA on Saturday, April 21st. A full schedule of Spring events can be found here.

Flyer for the upcoming Road Show in Amesbury, MA.

Cover of the METCO information pamphlet.

Pamphlet for parents about the METCO program.

FROM THE CITY TO THE SUBURBS: VOLUNTARY SCHOOL DESEGREGATION THROUGH BOSTON’S METCO PROGRAM

February 26, 2017 / Heidi Gengenbach / 0 Comments

By: Corinne Zaczek Bermon

In 1974, a young boy named Kevin Tyler stepped off his bus on the first day of school.((Name changed as request of former METCO student.)) As the Kevin looked out at the area surrounding his new school, he could only think that everything was foreign and weird. Although he was only ten miles from home, the Roxbury native thought that suburbia was another world. Gone were the noises from the street and common spaces and in their place were fences, private backyards, and white faces. Although it smelled cleaner, it wasn’t exactly pleasant to Kevin as the fresher air “felt weird to [his] nose.” The white students around him sounded strange and bland when they spoke, not in the expressive style he were used to in Roxbury. But even on his first day of school, Kevin could see that life in the suburbs was easier, charmed even.((Susan Eaton, The Other Boston Busing Story: What’s Won and Lost Across the Boundary Line (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 218-219.))

Pamphlet for parents about the METCO program. Image courtesy Northeastern University Archives & Special Collections.

Many METCO students experienced a disconnect after they disembarked the buses that brought them to their suburban schools. Perhaps more profoundly than anyone, these young students saw the consequences of the deep racial and class divide that characterized Boston. The suburbs may be close geographically to the metropolitan area, but as Robert observed, they were worlds apart.

So how did students of color end up at schools in the suburbs? As we have passed the fortieth anniversary of busing for school desegregation, it is important to note, that voluntary busing existed before Morgan v. Hennigan mandated it, and still exists today as the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity or, as it is commonly know, METCO.

Even after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which determined that segregated education was inherently unequal and in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, de facto segregation remained prevalent in both the northern and southern US schools. In 1967 the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights released a pamphlet titled “Schools Can Be Desegregated,” which made several statements regarding segregated schools in the US:

Racial isolation in the public schools is intense and is growing worse.

Negro children suffer serious harm when they are educated in racially segregated schools, whatever the origin of that segregation. They do not achieve as well as other children; their aspirations are more restricted than those of other children; and they do not have as much confidence that they can influence their own futures.

White children in all-white schools are also harmed and frequently are ill prepared to live in a world of people from diverse social, economic, and cultural background.((U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, “Schools Can be Desegregated” (Washington, D.C.: Clearinghouse Publication No. 8, June 1967) 1.))

A Bird's Eye View from Within-As We See It by the staff and board of Operation Exodus

“A Bird’s Eye View from Within – As We See It,” report on Operation Exodus, 1965. Image courtesy Northeastern University Archives & Special Collections. Full report online.

Faced with the unresponsive and all-white Boston School Committee’s stance towards de facto segregation in Boston schools, concerned parents and activists founded “Operation Exodus” through Roxbury’s Freedom House in 1965 as a voluntary way to desegregate Boston Public Schools. In its first year, 400 African American students from Roxbury and Dorchester were bused to the predominantly white, but under enrolled, Faneuil School in Back Bay. In 1966, Operation Exodus was renamed the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO). Immediately, Black students faced the problem of how to address race while part of an expressly integration-based program. As Susan Eaton, Ed.D., expert in racial and economic inequality in public education, discovered, “neither [black nor white students] talked to the other about race – the very thing that appeared to be separating them. As a result, race frequently felt to the black students like a family secret. To keep life going smoothly, everyone compliantly locked the race subject away. It was too potent to open, to delicate to touch.”((Eaton, 81.)) The attitude towards race as a subject to be avoided in some ways reflected the outcry against METCO in the city.

The Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, Inc. program created controversy in nearly every town to which it bused black urban students.

Photograph of black and white students sitting together in a classroom in Boston, circa 1973. Image courtesy of Boston City Archives.

While some suburbanites welcomed the program as a way to expose their children to a more diverse group of classmates while also assisting underprivileged urban students, others did not focus on the ideological mission of METCO. Instead, they considered the financial costs of the program, the potential negative impact on schools, and the needs of their own children to be more important than minimally integrating their school systems. Others accused METCO of reverse racism for primarily busing African American students rather than poor white students. During the 1970s busing crisis within Boston, the program exposed divisions and resentments between suburbs and the city and within the suburbs themselves. Many began to question the value of integration as well as its effectiveness. With the potential costs to each town and to each taxpayer, residents of both the city and suburbs wondered, was the ideological goal of integration a worthwhile endeavor?

The online exhibit, “Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO): Solving Racial Imbalance in Boston Public Schools,” created by graduate students Kristin Harris (MA American Studies, 2015) and Corinne Zaczek Bermon (MA American Studies, 2015; MA History Archives Track, 2017) explores the founding of the organization and the effects it had as a voluntary busing program rather than the controversial “forced busing.”

Using the METCO collection at Northeastern University, Harris and Bermon combed through nearly 144 boxes to find the story of METCO. They hand selected documents that highlighted the difficulties METCO had in funding despite support from the Board of Education and how parents stayed involved in the program through parent councils to keep their children safe and in the program.

This exhibit tells the story of the other side of the busing crisis in 1974-1975. Despite the ongoing violence and intimidation happening in city schools such as South Boston High School and Charlestown High School, METCO students had been quietly and determinedly attended suburban schools through their own busing program. Their stories counteract the narrative that all student busing for desegregation was fraught with protests and violence. The METCO program today still serves as a model for the country as to how to racially balance schools.

Visit the full exhibit to read more about METCO’s beginning and see how parent councils were involved closely with the host schools.

Poem by young student to Mayor Kevin White. Image courtesy of Boston City Archives. Rights status is not evaluated.

Caught in the Crossfire: Students’ Reactions to Busing in Boston

February 19, 2017 / Heidi Gengenbach / 0 Comments

On December 11, 1974, Michael Faith, a 17-year old student at South Boston High School, was stabbed by an 18-year old African American student while walking in the corridor to his second period class.

Excerpt of police log on October 8, 1974, documenting violence reported at Boston Public Schools between 10:30 am and 12:35 pm. The report for the two-hour period totaled 8 pages. Image courtesy Boston City Archives.

Violence erupted and race-related attacks escalated in Boston’s public schools from the first week of court-ordered busing that September.

On a daily basis many African American students, teacher’s aids, and bus drivers were pelted with rocks and bottles, struck with bats, beaten with fists, and threatened, as this excerpt of a police log for a 2-hour period indicates.

All students In Boston Public Schools (BPS) were affected by the violent reactions to busing on some level. Those who weren’t assaulted physically often witnessed or heard about brutal attacks that occurred in their, or nearby, schools. Student absenteeism skyrocketed in many schools as a result. How did students react to the atmosphere of violence and fear during the years busing was used to desegregate BPS?

Letter from 3rd grade student to Mayor Kevin White, telling him he wants the violence between blacks and whites to stop. Image courtesy of Boston City Archives. Rights status is not evaluated.

The online exhibit, “What About the Kids? A Look Into the Students’ Perspectives on School Desegregation,” created by Krystle Beaubrun (History, 2015) and Lauren Prescott* (Public History and Archives, 2016) explores opinions and reactions students had to what was commonly dubbed “forced busing” in Boston.

Using collections at Boston City Archives and UMass Boston’s Archives & Special Collections, Beaubrun and Prescott scoured hundreds of letters written to Kevin White–then mayor of Boston–and W. Arthur Garrity–the federal judge who ordered that schools be integrated through busing–by students.

Poem written by elementary school student to Mayor Kevin White in December, 1974–four months after Phase I (busing) of desegregating BPS was implemented. Image courtesy of Boston City Archives. Rights status is not evaluated.

They selected a sampling of letters written by students–in elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools in Boston and across on the country–sharing their unique reactions to busing as a way to desegregate BPS. Many younger students expressed confusion about the violence and prayed for its end. Some offered the adults suggestions on how to improve the situation.

Their exhibit captures the unique reasons high school juniors and seniors opposed “forced busing.” In heartfelt letters to officials, students described how busing about disrupted their place on sports teams, prevented them from partaking in traditions like senior prom, severed relationships they’d built with teachers, and prohibited them from graduating from the school system they’d attended their whole lives.

Despite the violence that erupted in schools during the early years of busing, Beaubrun and Prescott’s exhibit also documents how some black and white students joined together to counteract negativity. Responding to media coverage that generalized South Boston High School students as racists during the 1970s, students Michael Tierney and Danis Terris founded and launched MOSAIC in 1980.

An exhibit annoucement for MOSAIC. Image courtesy of UMass Boston, University Archives & Special Collections.

An exhibit announcement for MOSAIC. Image courtesy of UMass Boston, University Archives & Special Collections. Search or browse full-text issues here.

MOSAIC, a publication produced from 1980-1988, contained autobiographical stories, photographs and poetry from students at South Boston High School. The University Archives & Special Collections at UMass Boston has digitized the full 11-issue run of MOSAIC. Search or browse full-text issues here.

Visit the full exhibit to read more reactions students had to busing. Learn about how officials, clergy, and individuals around the around the world reacted to Boston’s busing crisis in future posts.

*Shortly after graduating with her MA in history, Lauren became the Executive Director of the South End Historical Society. Congratulations, Lauren!

Public History at UMass Boston