Collections

Finding the Fourth of July

When a group of upstart colonists declared their territories independent of the British Crown on July 4, 1776, they did it in a petition addressed to King George III. In the weeks following, this Declaration of Independence was reprinted, discussed and debated both in the colonies and in Britain, in newspapers, letters, pamphlets, and broadsides. You can now read those debates and discussions, and see them scanned online, whether celebratory, like a news item from New York:
We hear from Ticonderoga that on the 28th of July, immediately after divine Worship, the Declaration of independence was read by Colonel St. Clair, and having said, “God save the Free Independent States of America!” the army manifested their Joy with three Cheers. It was remarkably pleasing to see the Spirit of the Soldiers so raised after all their Calamities, the Language of every Man’s Countenance was, now we are a People! We have a Name among the States of this World. New York, August 19, 1776. New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury.
or dismissive, as in an essay written by Tory Governor of Massachusetts Thomas Hutchinson:
They begin with a false hypothesis, That the Colonies are one distinct people and the kingdom another, connected by political bands. The colonies, politically considered never were a distinct people from the kingdom. There never has been but one political band, and that was just the same before the first Colonists emigrated as it has been ever since. Hutchinson, Thomas, Strictures up the declaration of the Congress at Philadelphia, 1776.
These essays and much more are available in two of our newest licensed online collections: America’s Historical Newspapers, and Eighteenth Century Collections Online. America’s Historical Newspapers (Series I, 1690-1876) spans an extraordinary period in our history, from the Salem Witch trials to post-Civil War reconstruction. With newspapers from every part of the United States, scanned from more than 90 repositories including the Library of Congress and the American Antiquarian Society, from Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette to Alexander Hamilton’s New York Evening Post, this collection offers Northeastern researchers the first draft of American history. Eighteenth Century Collections Online is the place to look for British perspectives.  Based on the English Short Title catalog, it offers scans of works published in Britain 18th century, plus English language publications from other parts of the world. The period encompasses Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Hume’s History of England, and an early how-to: Best’s Concise Treatise on the Art of Angling. With printed books, pamphlets, essays, and broadsides, this collection complements another important collection, Early English Books Online, to offer Northeastern researchers an online library encompassing almost the entire printed record of the English Renaissance as well as the English Enlightenment. Exploring these two newly licensed collections allows us to understand, from the point of view of the people living at the time, the bonds that united Britain and America, as well as the forces that pulled us asunder.

Stream a New Movie this Summer

Summertime, and the viewing is easy… a perfect time to catch up on movies and documentaries. When it’s too hot to sit outside with a good book, crank up the a.c. close the curtains, get out some snacks and hit play.
  • Pick your format! Snell Library has excellent DVD and streaming video collections. See this year’s academy award winning films on DVD. Classics, contemporary films, and documentaries will expand your horizons.
  • Locate videos by subject, keyword or title in Scholar OneSearch.
  • This icon Film Reel Iconwill appear beside a DVD, streaming videos will say “Online access”
  • Use this streaming media guide to locate titles by vendor and subject. Our largest vendors are Academic Video Online Premium and Kanopy with a wealth of informative and entertaining choices.
Here are some recommended streaming media titles. Feel free to write me about your favorites. Full-Length Features:
  1. Au Revoir les Enfants- the story of friendship and loss between friends in Nazi-occupied France
  2. Charlie Chaplin silent films – see a few!
  3. Diabolique- a French murder tale–don’t miss this classic.
  4. Reaching for the Moon – depicts the relationship between poet Elizabeth Bishop and architect Lota de Macedo Soares.
  5. Stranger than Paradise– Jim Jarmusch’s transcendent adventures of a Hungarian émigré, his friend, and cousin.
Riveting Documentaries:
  1. The Belle of Amherst –a 1976 theatrical performance of Emily Dickinson by Julie Harris. See Cynthia Nixon’s portrayal of Emily in the film “A Quiet Passion” playing in local theaters.
  2. Grey Gardens– meet eccentric Big and Little Edie Beale: mother and daughter, high-society dropouts, and reclusive cousins of Jackie Onassis.
  3. Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble- be entertained by these international traveling musicians.
  4. Notes on Blindness– a mesmerizing experience of John Hull’s experience becoming blind as an adult, and how he has adapted to a world without sight.
  5. Photography Transformed:1960-1999– key photographers discusses photography’s effect on American life.
     

Interlibrary Loan: Powering access to resources from around the globe

Interlibrary Loan services come to the rescue when students and faculty need access to information the library doesn’t have. Whether it’s a book, journal/magazine article, or an article from a small newspaper published in the 1930s, the library works to ensure access to a diverse network of library collections and the ability to borrow from them. Here you can see libraries from around the world that have loaned to Northeastern. In addition to these, Northeastern borrows from hundreds of libraries in the United States and Canada ranging from large universities to small community colleges and public libraries. We’ve created an interactive map of all our interlibrary loan transactions in the past year and have highlighted some places where we’ve borrowed from below so you can see how far some of your resources have travelled. ILL Map Blog Post ILL BLog Post Places

New and improved! Portal to Latino/a collections

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Announcing the Archives and Special Collections new portal to Boston’s latino/a history, http://latinohistory.library.northeastern.edu/!

Boston’s Latino/a Community History Collection contains images, documents, and posters selected from the Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción records and the La Alianza Hispana records held in the Northeastern University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections Department. The documents scanned from the collection include organizational charts and histories, committee and taskforce meeting minutes, fact sheets, by-laws, articles of incorporation, annual reports, program descriptions and brochures, newsletters, and organizational reports. The records available in this online collection document public policy formation, community relations, affordable housing, urban planning and housing rehabilitation, cultural and educational programming, violence prevention, and minority rights during the last decades of the 20th century.

The collection was originally scanned and made available in 2009 by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services but has since been completely overhauled.  Each item was given additional item-level metadata allowing users to dig deeper into the collection.  The searching and browsing interfaces were rebuilt using the Library’s Digital Scholarship Group’s CERES: Exhibit Toolkit, giving users immediate and searchable access to the collection.  CERES is a user-friendly platform with which faculty, staff, and student scholars at Northeastern University are building WordPress exhibits incorporating curated digital objects.

To learn more about the Digital Scholarship Group and CERES, go to http://dsg.neu.edu/the-drs-project-toolkit-is-now-ceres-exhibit-toolkit/

The Media and Boston Public Schools Desegregation

The following is a series written by archivists, academics, activists, and educators making available primary source material, providing pedagogical support, and furthering the understanding of Boston Public School’s Desegregation history. View all posts
Unpublished photograph by Clif Garboden September 1974

Unpublished photograph by Clif Garboden
September 1974

When the court-ordered desegregation of the Boston Public School system led to controversial practice of busing in the 1970s, the local and national media covered it prolifically. Pictures of protests and school buses flanked by police officers made for eye-catching footage. But as Phase II of Busing approached in September of 1975, some residents felt they were being unfairly represented.  Citizens of Charlestown complained that “the national media is always throwing up that we’re a violent people” as Newsweek reporters camped out to see “the second act of Boston’s national spectacle.” To some extent, the Boston Phoenix, did the same.[1] However, very few pictures of anti-busing protests appear in the paper. Those that do create an impact; one chilling example however shows a group of young white men standing around a burning effigy captioned with a racial slur published on September 16th.
The Boston Phoenix, September 16, 1975

The Boston Phoenix, September 16, 1975

The Boston Phoenix instead chose to focus on individuals, a piece on Judge Wendell Garrity, the federal judge who ordered the desegregation, ran on September 9, 1975 and an article written by Tom Sheehan, ran on September 16, 1975, titled “Three Families in the Midst of Busing” which profiled three families dealing with busing in different ways. The Hollis family, an African-American family being bused from Jamaica Plain to Charlestown, the McDonoughs, a white family being bused who supported the endeavor, and the Wrenns, a white family who opposed the decision. Even the articles regarding the protests focused on police officers and how they dealt with the protester’s attitudes towards them rather than the protesters themselves. Alongside these articles Boston Phoenix readers looked into the faces of those taking part in the drama; school committee members, police officers, parents, and most all, the children. One of the most prolific of these photographers, capturing the faces of these players was Clif Garboden.
The Boston Phoenix, September 16, 1975

The Boston Phoenix, September 16, 1975

Clif Garboden began working for the Boston Phoenix as a freelancer in the late 1960s, eventually coming on the staff full-time. Garboden rose  to the position of Senior Editor by the time he left the Boston Phoenix in 2009. During the turbulent years of the sixties and seventies, Garboden took his share of photographs of events but many times he focused on the individuals involved. While he was still a college student at Boston University, his photographs captured speakers, musicians, and professors for BU News. Even at that early point in his career, his photographs show the events occurring without losing the individuality of the people in the crowd. His work during Busing is no different. The September 9th article on Judge Garrity includes not only a photograph by Garboden of the school committee in session which gives a sense of their work environment but the next page also provides close-ups of the members, their large name plagues dominating the foreground and their expressions betraying their thoughts and emotions of the subject matter. In the article “Three Families in the Midst of Busing”, Garboden photographed the pro-busing family the McDonoughs. While the photographers of the other two families chose to portray their subjects in the midst of action, Garboden’s shots are portraits, leaving it up to the reader to make their own judgement. This is not simply an editing choice, the Garboden Negative Collection, now available at Northeastern University’s Archives, shows that every shot he took was framed in this manner.
Anti-Busing Rally, Charlestown, August 1975 Unpublished Photo by Clif Garboden

Anti-Busing Rally, Charlestown, August 1975
Unpublished Photo by Clif Garboden

The Garboden Negative Collection offers a peak into the editorial practices of the Boston Phoenix.  Garboden did take photographs of an anti-busing rally in Charleston but none of them ever made it to the paper. He took pictures of the reporting being done by the television news stations, possibly for an article regarding how the rest of the media was portraying the events. Instead, one of the most beautiful pictures he contributed to the Busing articles shows a lines of children, mostly Asian-American lined up at a bus stop in Chinatown accompanying an article by Nancy Pomerene. Although only one was published, the negatives show the amount of time Garboden took trying to preserve the sweet smiles of children who just wanted to go to school. In the midst of the hullabaloo Garboden and the Boston Phoenix tried to highlight the stories of those overshadowed by the rest of the media and their collections allow those narratives to remain for future generations.      
 

[1] Dumanoski, Dianne. “Charlestown – ‘My Town” – Braces for Busing.” The Boston Phoenix, September 02, 1975.