Posted on 1 Comment on Reflecting Back, Moving Forward

Reflecting Back, Moving Forward

by: Marilyn Morgan

With some heaviness in my heart, I recently announced my decision to leave my post as director of the Archives Program to apply my skills and passion for educational technology as an Instructional Designer at the Harvard Business School.

Graduate students working as a team to appraise a collection in “Intro to Archives,” fall 2017.

When I stepped into my role as the director of the Archives Program in September 2014, I felt honored to assume leadership of a program that provides affordable and high-quality graduate education in archival studies.

With support from  my extraordinary colleagues of the University Archives and Special Collections  (UASC) and the help of skilled and selfless archivists, including Marta Crilly, Anna Clutterbuck-Cook, Alfie Paul, Jenny Gotwals, and Juliana Kuipers, the program has transformed. Together, we shaped a program that prepares students by blending archival theory with practical hands-on education.

Graduate students in History 627, processing archival collections, thanks to a collaborative arrangement with the UASC.

Thanks to the ongoing support of Joanne Riley, Interim Dean of University Libraries at UMass Boston, and UASC processing archivist Meghan Bailey, graduate students in the program gained the unique opportunity to process archival collections, producing online finding aids that enable researchers to use collections. The Archives Program could not have succeeded without this collaborative ongoing arrangement.

Katie Burke, processing the records of the Massachusetts Federation for Fair Housing in “Archival Methods and Processing,”  spring 2017. The collection is housed at the UASC; access the finding aid online.

Over the past three years, the program forged critical new collaborations with local institutions including Boston City Archives; the Massachusetts Historical Society, the National Park Service, Boston; and the National Archives at Boston.

Marta Crilly, Archivist for Reference and Outreach at Boston City Archives, shared her expertise with students in all archives courses. Our ongoing collaboration enabled students in the course, “Transforming Archives & History in a Digital Age,” to gain invaluable experience digitizing records pertaining to the turmoil surrounding the desegregation of Boston Public Schools in 1974.

Archives students working together on a project during a class held at Boston City Archives.

 

That hands-on experience gave our students the chance to participate in digital projects, create metatdata, and design robust, engaging online exhibits that received local and national recognition. The digital exhibits students created in Omeka provided public access to many historical documents that were previously inaccessible.

Screenshot of the course site displaying online exhibits designed by students in “Transforming Archives and History in a Digital Age.”

In 2016, the Center for History and New Media recognized the online exhibits designed by graduate students in the Archives Program and the course site remains as a featured site in Omeka’s showcase. I could not be more proud of our students and recent graduates!

Alfie Paul (right) sharing his collection knowledge with students of H 630 as they investigated the desegregation of Boston Public Schools, spring 2016.

During the search for the next Archives Program director, it’s my pleasure to report that two seasoned and passionate leaders in the profession will begin teaching archives courses in the spring semester. Alfie Paul, Director of Archival Operations at the National Archives at Boston will teach “Archival Methods and Processing” while Veronica Martzahl, Digital Records Archivist at the Massachusetts Archives, will begin teaching “Transforming Archives & History in a Digital Age.”

Through determination and commitment to quality education, the program has grown more robust over the past three years. We have advanced a culture of practical education and performance that distinguishes our students. Graduates of the program promise to become future leaders in the profession.

For these reasons and more, I will truly miss having the honor of educating the graduate students of the Archives Program at UMass Boston. I have learned as much as I have taught. I look forward to hearing of our students’ future successes and achievements.

Posted on No Comments on Think Like an Archivist: A Public Historian Processes the Washington Street Corridor Coalition Collection

Think Like an Archivist: A Public Historian Processes the Washington Street Corridor Coalition Collection

By: Caroline Littlewood

Recently, the University Archives and Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston acquired the papers of the Washington Street Corridor Coalition (WSCC), a local organization committed to transport justice. The WSCC, a community group active in Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, the South End, and Chinatown during the 1980s and 1990s, advocated for adequate replacement of the Elevated Orange Line along Washington Street.

The Elevated Orange Line on Washington Street south from Corning Street, ca. 1908. Courtesy of Boston City Archives. See City of Boston Flickr albums for more historic photos.

The group also facilitated community involvement in the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) planning and development process and orchestrated protests when MBTA service did not meet their community’s needs.

Flyer, produced by the WSCC, announcing a silent vigil to express a sense of community loss over the El’s closure.

Three decades after the Coalition’s founding, the WSCC records provide a treasure trove for researchers interested in community organizing, grassroots activism, and resident resistance to development.

Along with three other collections, the WSCC records were entrusted to the graduate students of Professor Marilyn Morgan’s Archival Methods & Practices class in spring 2017. On the first day of class, I was assigned to process the WSCC collection. I spent the rest of the semester preparing it for researchers and preserving it for the future. To do these things, I needed to produce a finding aid that described the contents of the collection and the value of the story it tells.

A carton of the Washington Street Corridor Coalition collection, in February 2017, before it was processed.

The first time I set eyes on my collection, I confronted a single cardboard box with dividers and papers and spiral notebooks and more papers. Next to the box was a pile of bound reports, inches thick. I wasn’t sure what I was looking at, and I knew next to nothing about the WSCC. I had the urge to research my collection the way one would a person or artifact. But I couldn’t. Nothing had been written yet; the research materials weren’t in an archive or library. They sat in front of me, thousands of pages thick and unprepared for use by the public.

As a public history student and genealogist, I’ve learned how to interrogate a document from every angle, wringing every last drop of evidence. The urge to analyze is so ingrained, it’s practically instinctual. When faced with the WSCC collection, I wanted to pull up a chair and get to reading. However, I would not be assessing and describing every individual item in the collection. This would take too much time and prevent timely public access to the documents. It would be unnecessary and a waste of resources. Instead, I would be describing groups of documents.

To do this, I had to train my brain to work a little differently, to seek different kinds of information. Scanning each document, I had to consider intellectual content. Was it a letter, a memo, a map? Was there sensitive information? A date? What was it about? I also had to consider physical content. Did the document need to be photocopied, moved to the oversize folder, or rid of a rusty staple?

At first, this was an uncomfortable process for me. I couldn’t simultaneously assess the physical and intellectual content. But after practice, I began to see in a new way.

MBTA map showing the Washington Street Elevated route, as it existed from 1938 to 1975. Wikimedia Commons.

I scanned for the names and acronyms of key players, following the gist of their correspondence without reading every word, and understanding the general findings of reports without flipping through every page. By the end of the semester, I knew that the Elevated Orange Line train was a vital transport link which ran along Washington Street, through downtown Boston and neighboring communities.

When the MBTA moved the Orange Line to the southwest corridor and closed the “El” in 1987, community groups came together under the WSCC name to hold the MBTA accountable to their 1973 promise that they would replace it with equal or better service.

Excerpt of a publication concerning the replacement of the El.

I learned that the WSCC had launched an extensive letter writing campaign in support of Light Rail Vehicles and worked with other organizations to hold community dialogues about replacement options. I also knew that the MBTA finally replaced the old Orange Line with the Silver Line, a Bus Rapid Transit system the WSCC deemed neither better than, nor equal to, Orange Line service. And as the Silver Line expanded, WSCC activity waned.

Newspaper clipping reporting on the community reaction to the closing of the EL, 1987.

I was inspired and challenged by this collection. It was my first experience facilitating access to archival material, rather than mining the material, myself. The primary purpose of my investigation was to aid and encourage the investigations of others. This was a new goal for me, but, at the end of the day, it fit. As a public historian, I want to connect people to history and encourage historical thinking. Maybe, with a little more brain training, I can do this from within the archives, too.