Archives and Special Collections

Archives, Historical Records, Special Collections

Box by Box: Inventorying the Cambridge Women’s Center Records

Since last fall, the processing team has been focused on inventorying unprocessed collections. Inventories allow staff and researchers to learn more about what’s in a collection, help locate materials of interest, and help staff strategize further processing or digitization work, as resources allow. A previous blog post described inventorying the Stull & Lee records. Currently, processing assistants are inventorying more recent donations to the archives. Over the next few months, we will be featuring collections our staff has found particularly interesting to inventory in their own words.

Cambridge Women’s Center Records

By Aleks Renerts, Processing Assistant

I recently worked on the creation of an inventory for the Cambridge Women’s Center records. The Center was founded after a group of female protestors occupied an underutilized Harvard-owned building on International Women’s Day on March 8, 1971. They demanded affordable housing, child care, and equal access to education. The movement gained local publicity and heightened awareness, and donations in support of the sit-in allowed the group to purchase a property at 46 Pleasant Street in Cambridge, from which the Center still operates.

The Cambridge Women’s Center records offer a picture of how the policies, goals, and actions of the Center have changed over time. Volunteers at the Center established programs to address domestic violence, racism, access to healthcare, housing and job opportunities, sexual abuse, and other issues affecting women. The records include newsletters, flyers, calendars, meeting notes and memos, and planning documents for activities that demonstrate the impact the Center has had on the community, and offer valuable perspective on feminist thought and activism from the 1970s to the present.

An example I found particularly interesting were the documents pertaining to the inclusion of transgender women at the Center. A changing perspective on trans individuals can be read through meeting minutes and updated policies. At its inception, the Center was not open to transgender women who had not “completed” medical transition, fearing that the presence of non-passing trans women might negatively impact other women at the Center. As these beliefs were challenged and discussed over time, the Center adopted a trans-inclusive policy as early as the 2000s, realigning the mission of the Center to be supportive and welcoming to all women regardless of personal histories.

Below is a glimpse at some of the records.

Two scanned pages of a document
A brief history of the Cambridge Women’s Center and its relation to broader feminist mobilization, circa 1980s. It links the founding moment of the Center to social and labor movements from the 19th century to the present, and discusses early initiatives by the Center’s founders.
Two scanned pages of a document
Shift journal, 2005. Women who answered the phone for the Cambridge Women’s Center helpline would take notes here. There are many fascinating entries discussing who called and for what reason, and a general sense of the internal functioning of the Center. Although the majority of callers were recorded as anonymous, there are a few entries that include names. Those names have been redacted to protect privacy.
Two scanned pages of a document
Transgender Committee meeting notes, early 2000s. This summary discusses the evolution of a trans-inclusionary mindset at the Cambridge Women’s Center.

To find out more about accessing the Cambridge Women’s Center records, email the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections at archives@northeastern.edu.

Aleks Renert (he/him) is a graduate student at Simmons University in the dual MA degree program in History and Library and Information Science, with a concentration in Archives Management. His academic background is history, with a focus on the Hispanic world and histories of class, gender, and colonialism. He received his BA in History from McGill University.

Tastemakers Archives Provides a Glimpse into Music Format History

Cover of Tastemakers magazine, Issue 16. It pictures a woman standing on a ladder under a tree picking CDs as though they are apples. The main headline is "Music for Free: Streaming stations for your listening pleasure and spotify is coming"

One of my recent projects was to digitize the very first issues of Tastemakers, Northeastern’s student-run music magazine, which began in 2007 and is still running today. Since the 2010-11 academic year, all issues were created in a born-digital format, so they were easy to add to the Digital Repository Service earlier this year. However, the first 19 issues were not, so it was my job to scan them on our Bookeye scanner and turn them into PDFs ready to be made accessible.

Since the issues in question date from 2007 to mid-2010, they fall exactly in the transitional moment of the music industry when legal streaming was still a novel concept, but CDs had fallen largely out of fashion in favor of iPods and other portable mp3 players. Consequently, as I was going through the magazines, I found an assortment of pieces that are retrospectively funny because we, in 2024, know the outcomes of all their speculations (most of which didn’t happen).

The articles I found fell into two broad categories: devices and streaming, both of which provide an interesting (as well as amusing) look at the future we imagined music would have at that time.

Article headlined "USB Devices...The New CD?"
Tastemakers, Issue 9, page 13

Let’s start with devices. The two pieces I found are on the potentiality of USB sticks and microSD cards as the dominant form of physical media to replace CDs. The USB article discusses a few bands and artists circa 2008, including Matchbox Twenty and Jennifer Lopez, who released albums on USB sticks embedded in rubber bracelets, primarily as a marketing gimmick. The author wonders whether if the technology will catch on in earnest or remain a ploy. At the time, vinyl was already starting to make a resurgence as the go-to medium for people who want their music on a physical object, and that group is comprised primarily of people who care deeply about the auditory and visual technical details of their music. So, I think the bracelets were never really going to work, since a group of mp3 files on a rubber bracelet couldn’t match up to either the quality or experience of vinyl on a record player, and thus eliminated their theoretical primary market. (It’s also funny to imagine collectors’ storage for a bunch of rubber bracelets. Would you keep them in a basket? Individual cases? One of those divider boxes for sorting hardware? On a pegboard on your wall?)

Article headlined "Good Idea/Bad Idea: Selling Music on SD Drives"
Tastemakers, Issue 12, page 17

Meanwhile, the microSD card piece talks about an attempt in late 2008 by major record labels to supplant (or at least supplement) CDs with pre-loaded microSD cards, branding as slotMusic, that can go into any phone or mp3 player with a corresponding card slot. This one is interesting because it could have possibly been successful, but only in a universe where Apple wasn’t already the dominant force in the portable music player market. iPods were well established as everyone’s favorite internet-based mp3 player, and the iPhone was already becoming the most popular phone, which combined the two via a built-in iTunes app and completely removed the need to even have a separate device for music. Even if they had managed to carve out a market around Apple, rapid increases in storage capacity would have also rendered them useless within a handful of years. While 1GB was a significant amount of storage for the size of a microSD in 2008, 128GB microSDs were introduced in 2014, which is a 127,000% increase in about five years. They didn’t stop there. Today, microSD cards are available in sizes up to 1TB, which is big enough to fit 1,000 slotMusic cards on a single item. So, slotMusic never really stood a chance.

Now, on to streaming. Over the course of three years, Tastemakers published five different pieces about then-current and upcoming streaming services, effectively culminating (though not knowingly at the time) in a piece about the European launch of Spotify. Nearly all of the platforms mentioned are now entirely defunct, with some exceptions including Spotify and Amazon mp3 (now Amazon Music). The other remaining platforms now provide internet radio and recommendation sites, rather than streaming music, a fact that does not seem coincidental. Here’s a breakdown:

Chart titled "Streaming Service Breakdown" and contains a list of past and present streaming services and their pros and cons
Sources: Issue 3, page 8 (Ruckus); Issue 7, page 16 (FreeMusicZilla); Issue 5, page 15 (Spiralfrog, Amazon mp3, Grooveshark, The Hype Machine, Blip.fm); Issue 16, pages 20-21 (Last.fm, Songza); Issue 6, page 20 (Seeqpod)

It’s also amusing now to think of Spotify as the hip new platform from Europe. Their article quotes other American journalists who had received early-access press accounts describing Spotify as “the world’s biggest iTunes collection” and “an almost infinite jukebox.” It sounds quaint in today’s world, but then you can’t describe something with words that don’t yet exist. Reading their predictions from 2009 about whether Spotify will be successful while others failed is like listening to someone try to predict the ending of a TV show that you’ve already finished.

Two-page spread article headlined "Music for Free: Spotify is Coming"
Tastemakers, Issue 16, page 22-23

I sat for about 30 minutes trying to think of something to speculate for the future the way that these articles speculated about streaming. The conclusion I came to is that I don’t think there are any more technological advancements that music needs to make; you can get a device that fits in your pocket with up to 1TB of space and provides access to anything on Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube. Either that, or, like the writes of Tastemakers in 2007-2010, I cannot even conceive of what is yet to come, exactly because it has not come yet.

Box by Box: Inventorying the Theater Offensive Records

Since last fall, the processing team has been focused on inventorying unprocessed collections. Inventories allow staff and researchers to learn more about what’s in a collection, help locate materials of interest, and help staff strategize further processing or digitization work, as resources allow. A previous blog post described inventorying the Stull & Lee records. Currently, processing assistants are inventorying more recent donations to the archives. Over the next few months, we will be featuring collections our staff has found particularly interesting to inventory in their own words.

Abe Ryebeck surrounded by archival materials and an interested audience
Abe Rybeck (center, blue shirt) discusses the history of the Theater Offensive at a recent NUASC event, June 2024. Photo by Grace Millet.

Theater Offensive Records

By Julia Lee, Processing Assistant

I was excited to inventory the Theater Offensive records after meeting the company’s founder Abe Rybeck at a recent Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections (NUASC) event. Rybeck explained to a group of curious staff and guests the backstory of several Theater Offensive items on display and their connections to the activism he was engaged in during the 1980s. As an undergraduate theater major at Northeastern University, I learned about and participated in the Boston theater scene, so working with these records was particularly special, as they represent the history of a community I have been a part of.

climACTS POP! program
climACTS benefit program cover, 2008. The Theater Offensive records, Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections

The Theater Offensive is an LGBTQ+ theater company that has engaged in performance and activism, often simultaneously, since its founding in 1989. The company works to support and uplift LGBTQ+ youth artists, especially BIPOC, in Greater Boston. NUASC has received several donations of records from the Theater Offensive over the years; the particular donation I inventoried includes materials primarily from the 2000s and 2010s and demonstrates the Theater Offensive’s continued efforts to call attention to the LGBTQ+ issues that Rybeck discussed. The intersection of sex positivity and community theater is evident from the name of their yearly benefit to support their programs: climACTS! These benefits make up a significant portion of the donated records, documented through publicity and planning materials.

A person dressed in a cowboy shirt and hat kisses the hands of a person wearing a blue blouse and headband
Noelia Ortiz Cortés (left) and Abe Rybeck in Immaculate Infection, circa 1999-2000. Photo by Craig Bailey. The Theater Offensive records, Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections

A small section of materials chronicling the Theater Offensive’s predecessor, the United Fruit Company, even more directly support Rybeck’s accounts of the company’s “guerilla theater” protests in the form of dramatic, often satirical, public performances meant to call attention to societal issues. Even performance art can be clearly represented in material artifacts, whether it is captured in photographs, like the one of Rybeck and Noelia Ortiz Cortés in Immaculate Infection (right) or in items like the Fenway Official Cruiser Membership Card.

The card references the Back Bay Fens, which Rybeck explained was the location of many performances, as gay men often congregated in the area. Rybeck’s explanations of the company’s activism and beliefs are also echoed in the letter and order form addressed to a “fan” of the United Fruit Company. The order form in particular mentions the Hunks of Nicaragua Calendar and Homo Milk Carton, which were both displayed at the recent event and discussed by Rybeck.

Archival materials laid out, including a Hunks of Nicaragua Calendar of a pamphlet about Homo Milk
Hunks of Nicaragua calendar and the Homo Milk Carton from the Theater Offensive records, Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections

Overall, I appreciated how the records fit into the arc of the Theater Office as an organization. It contains not just material from the company’s earliest days, but also reflects nearly two decades of the Theater Offensive’s evolution that leads to and shapes their programming and ideals today.

Learn more about how to access the Theater Offensive records by emailing archives@northeastern.edu. You can also browse digitized Theater Offensive content in Northeastern’s Digital Repository Service or check out a previous blog post about Theater Offensive records written by Grace Millet.

Julia Lee (she/her) is in her first year of the Simmons University Library and Information Science graduate program. She received her BA from Northeastern University with a combined major in English and Theatre. Her final Northeastern co-op was as a digital assistant for the Massachusetts State Archives.

Supporting Community Commemoration: 50 Years of the Garrity Decision

Outreach work in archives often intersects with observing anniversaries. This is especially true at Northeastern’s Archives and Special Collections, which houses records of community-based organizations that are still around today. This year, in 2024, community members across the Greater Boston area have been observing the anniversary of the court decision by Judge Arthur Garrity to desegregate Boston’s public schools.

My role as Reference and Outreach Archivist is to connect the community members and organizations with records relevant to their needs in the most meaningful way possible. I do this type of work regularly by providing classes, workshops, and reference and research services. But for occasions such as a 50-year anniversary, reference and outreach work requires customized approaches.

This summer, I managed a very customized approach to archival outreach: coordinating and designing a multi-archive and guest-curated exhibit on school desegregation for installation in the Boston Public Library’s (BPL) Gallery J. While discussion of creating the exhibit began a year ago, when leaders in the Boston Desegregation and Busing Initiative (BDBI helped submit a proposal to the BPL, the curation, exhibition selection, design, and installation happened quickly over the last couple of months. What resulted is a 20-case exhibition in the central branch of Boston’s public library entitled, “A History of Public Education Reform and Desegregation in Boston.”

A glass case containing archival documents and photos
One chapter of the “A History of Public Education Reform and Desegregation in Boston” exhibit in Gallery J of Boston Public Library
Archivist Molly Brown stands on a stool and hangs archival materials in a glass display case
Molly Brown installing exhibit pieces

Community historian Jim Vrabel lent his deep knowledge to propose an exhibit observing 10 chapters of Boston’s desegregation history, beginning in 1635 and ending today in 2024. Paired with each chapter was a timeline of events in the long history of education activism and desegregation in the city. Area archives, including the City of Boston Archives, the John Joseph Moakley Archive and Institute at Suffolk University, and the University of Massachusetts Boston Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library, contributed records that were selected by Vrabel to illustrate the narratives in each chapter. This collaboration resulted more than 90 archival records and excerpts included in the 10 timelines.

After the exhibit narrative had been written and the archival materials selected, it was up to me to design, format, and caption the exhibit, as well as make reproductions to display in the exhibit cases. Northeastern University Library sponsored the printing of the reproductions. All of the exhibit elements were installed for viewing on Sept. 18, in time to serve as a part of BPL’s citywide forums on Sept. 28, offering visual and tangible evidence to the emotional personal stories and responses to the events of school desegregation that still reverberate today.

A glass case containing archival documents and photos

But not all outreach takes place in an exhibit. Sometimes, a custom outreach project looks like making large-scale reproductions of documents and photographs to spark conversation, kept and stewarded by a partner organization, as I did last September for the BDBI. Other times, it can be providing in-depth rights and permissions labor, approving use of images in projects and suggesting other images to include, as I did for the BDBI and WGBH for their digital walking tour of school desegregation history.

Beyond the digital resources, you can also view the exhibit for yourself by visiting the Boston Public Library’s Central Branch (700 Boylston Street). It will be on display in Gallery J until Jan. 7.

Follow the BDBI for more events and updates, and consider attending their forums at the BPL this Saturday, Sept. 28.

Box by Box: Inventorying the Nancy Walker Papers

Since last fall, the processing team has been focused on inventorying unprocessed collections. Inventories allow staff and researchers to learn more about what’s in a collection, help locate materials of interest, and help staff strategize further processing or digitization work, as resources allow. A previous blog post described inventorying the Stull & Lee records. Currently, processing assistants are inventorying more recent donations to the archives. Over the next few months, we will be featuring collections our staff has found particularly interesting to inventory in their own words.

The Nancy Walker Papers

By Samuel Edwards, Processing Assistant

Nancy Walker, Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections.

The Nancy Walker papers, donated to the archives this past year, document the life of lesbian activist and writer/journalist Nancy Walker (1935-1996). Walker was a writer for the Gay Community News, Bay Windows, and the Boston Phoenix, and was a prominent figure in Boston’s LGBTQ+ community from the late 1970s to the ’90s.

Part of what makes this collection fascinating is not just Walker’s own writing, but also her dedication to collecting all manner of LGBTQ+ periodicals and ephemera. Her papers provide a glimpse into the beginning of the gay liberation movement through the eyes of someone who considered herself a political moderate. Her collection is a snapshot of an important time in Boston’s LGBTQ+ history, when the gay rights movement was starting to have real organizing power and institutions like Gay Community News were taking shape.

When I go through the collection, I imagine that I’m Nancy Walker herself, reporting on issues that matter to the gay community that few in the mainstream would cover at that time, and embroiled in a whole mess of loving yet intense intracommunity debate. As someone who has also been involved in LGBTQ+ activism, it strikes me how, in some ways, things have really changed, but in other ways, they haven’t at all!

One item that showcases that complex, interconnected, and exciting social world is the 14th Annual Boston Lesbian & Gay Pride Celebration Calendar of Events, with the iconic Lavender Rhino on the cover. I love these event calendars because it makes it even easier to envision what life was like in this community at the time. It shows many expected social groups and dances, as well as organizations that are still active today, like the Boston Alliance of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Youth (BAGLY). However, it also showcases some events you may have never considered, like a Lesbian Whale Watch.

14th Annual Boston Lesbian & Gay Pride Celebration Calendar of Events cover and page, 1984. Nancy Walker papers, Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections.

The collection documents more than just Boston history and Walker’s own identities, and some items showcase unexpected LGBTQ+ history. One example is an article from Back/Chat, a newsletter for the Community Homophile Association of Toronto. It was written in 1974 by Lee Paul Anderson, a trans teenager, and describes some of his experiences and frustration with gender roles. This document reflects the history of trans youth prior to contemporary mainstream media attention.

An article from Back/Chat
Back/Chat first page, Volume 4 Number 3, 1974. Nancy Walker papers, Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections.

This collection provides a window not into just Walker’s own life, but what the entire LGBTQ+ scene was like in Boston in the late ’70s, ’80s, and early ’90s. You can also get a glimpse of LGBTQ+ Toronto, as Walker lived there before moving to Boston, a fact that highlights how one individual’s life can be a useful avenue into multiple histories.

If you are interested in LGBTQ+ history both in the general and local sense, I highly recommend giving the Nancy Walker papers a look. While you do, I would also recommend listening to Nancy Walker’s interview with the Making Gay History podcast to learn more about her fascinating life.

Contact the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections by emailing them at archives@northeastern.edu to find out more about how to view Nancy Walker’s papers.