Archives and Special Collections

Archives, Historical Records, Special Collections

Meet the 2017 CERES Exhibit Toolkit Projects!

The DSG is proud to announce the projects chosen for this year’s round of CERES Exhibit Toolkit development. We will work with the following four projects to implement enhancements and new features to improve user experience, create additional exhibit tools, and incorporate the Toolkit in the classroom:  

Boston as Middle Passage

In 2015, students and researchers working with the National Parks Service built a website to preserve research documenting Boston as one of many transatlantic slave trade Middle Passage sites. Sadly, in less than two years the site has become unusable due to server issues and lapsed hosting. This year we will work with the creators of the site to transfer the rescued research materials to the DRS and recreate the original exhibits in the Early Black Boston Digital Almanac (a 2016 Toolkit project still in development).  

Dragon Prayer Book

The Dragon Prayer Book project is a research endeavor led by Erika Boeckeler, faculty in the Department of English, to study the Dominican Prayer Book, a fifteenth century manuscript held by Archives and Special Collections. The Dragon Prayer Book project was accepted as a Toolkit project in 2016, and this year we will work with the project team to enhance the Toolkit’s IIIF high-resolution image viewer: http://dragonprayerbook.northeastern.edu/mirador/  

Freedom House

As part of their ongoing effort to highlight archival collections using online exhibits, last year Archives and Special Collections used the Toolkit to create and set of exhibits for the Freedom House photograph collection: http://freedomhouse.library.northeastern.edu/. This year, Archives proposed a new browse feature that would allow them to build dynamic exhibits that could bring together all Freedom House materials that match a particular subject term, like “Kennedy, John F.”. This enhancement will allow Archives and other Toolkit site builders to create dynamic exhibits that automatically populate with DRS materials matching particular subjects, creators, or other faceted metadata values.  

Literature and Digital Diversity

This fall, Elizabeth Dillon and Sarah Connell will be co-teaching Literature and Digital Diversity, an undergraduate course focusing on “the use of digital methods to analyze and archive literary texts, with particular attention to issues of diversity and inclusion”. Students in the class will use the Toolkit to explore “how computers, databases, and analytical tools give substance to concepts of aesthetic, cultural, and intellectual value as inflected by race and gender.” This project will be the first to use the CERES classroom teaching materials originally developed for Nicole Aljoe’s award-winning Writing Black Boston class, which used the Toolkit to create the Early Black Boston Digital Almanac (still in development). To increase the breadth of materials available to the class (and other site builders), we will also consider adding Europeana as an additional data source for Toolkit materials (similar to the DPLA connection built in 2016).   We also continue work with our partners on the 2015 and 2016 projects: For more information about these projects, visit the DSG website (about the projects, about CERES) or contact us.

Find LGBTQA Organizations in the Archives

Celebrate pride month by checking out digitized documents from some of these Boston LGBTQA organizations.  Northeastern’s Archives and Special Collections are home to the records of many Boston Area organizations. Visit library.northeastern.edu/archives-special-collections for more.

Abe Rybeck as Hagai in Pure PolyESTHERThe Theater Offensive

The Theater Offensive was founded in 1989 by Abraham Rybeck “to form and present the diverse realities of queer lives in art so bold it breaks through personal isolation and political orthodoxy to help build an honest, progressive community.” The Theater Offensive mounts and produces festivals and individual productions by national and local queer performers, and also serves as a development environment for new theatrical work. In addition, The Theater Offensive works to build community through education, outreach, and political activism.

           

Pride Dance at the castle at the Park PlazaAIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts

The AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts, Inc. was founded in 1983 by a group of volunteers. Larry Kessler, one of the founders of the AIDS Action Committee, became its first Executive Director in 1983. The AIDS Action Committee began its life as a special committee of the Fenway Community Health Center and in 1986 became an independent entity. It is the oldest and largest organization in New England dedicated to helping persons with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus).

           

Boston Gay Men's Chorus at Boston Pride MarchBoston Gay Men’s Chorus

The Boston Gay Men’s Chorus, founded in 1982, is a 175-voice ensemble focusing on creative programming and community outreach. The records document the administrative and concert history of the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus and consist of board minutes, committee minutes, programs, newsletters, press materials, financial records, subject files, photographs, and concert banners.

The Speaker: The Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Speakers Bureau of BostonBoston Alliance of Gay and Lesbian Youth

The Boston Alliance of Gay and Lesbian Youth, Inc. known as BAGLY, Inc., was founded in 1980 as the first youth-run organization for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth in Boston. Headed by Executive Director Grace Sterling Stowell, BAGLY is a youth-led, adult-advised social support organization that creates, sustains and advocates for programs, policies and services for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth aged 22 and under.

     

Catherine Allen and the Early Years of Title IX

Written by Teresa de Costa, School of Journalism. Catherine AllenNortheastern’s Archives and Special Collections have compiled the works of Catherine Allen, a prominent Boston educator and professor at Bouvé College. Allen’s collection includes her notes and pictures of life achievements throughout her career in Boston. Authors Diane LeBlanc and Allys Swan published the book “Playing for Equality: Oral Histories of Women Leaders in the Early Years of Title IX.” The bulk of the research which informed this work was done with the help of Northeastern’s Archives. Swan and LeBlanc examine Allen’s life as a musician, coach and teacher. During Allen’s time in Boston, she taught at Bouvé College and spoke all over the world as a coeducational advocate. According to Michelle Romero, Assistant Archivist, “In 1980 the Boston-Bouvé College merged with Northeastern University’s College of Education to form the Boston-Bouvé College of Human Development Professions. In 1992 the school merged with the College of Pharmacy and Allied Health Professions and continues at Northeastern University as the Bouvé College of Health Sciences.” Allen observed Northeastern students in her notes and called them “Beautifully educated.” Her work with former Northeastern President Asa Knowles created a coeducational program ten years before Title IX. Title IX allowed anyone to be educated without prejudice. With Allen’s passing in 2002 her legacy still lives in the surviving students from Bouvé College. “They created a sisterhood where they share fond memories.” Said Romero “These women are real go getter’s.” The work of Catherine Allen and Bouvé Exhibit can be viewed at Snell Library.

Dragon Prayer Book Featured on News @ Northeastern

Photo cour­tesy of the North­east Doc­u­ment
Con­ser­va­tion Center

Rare book from Northeastern archives selected for ‘illuminated manuscripts’ display November 15, 2016 by Thea Singer

A palm-​​size 15th-​​century book from Northeastern’s archives at Snell Library was selected to be part of the multi-​​venue exhibit “Beyond Words: Illu­mi­nated Man­u­scripts in Boston Col­lec­tions.” Described by its cura­tors as “the largest exhibit of pre-​​1600 man­u­scripts ever mounted in North America,” “Beyond Words” fea­tures more than 260 items span­ning the 9th to the 17th cen­turies donated by 19 Boston-​​area libraries and museums.

Northeastern’s con­tri­bu­tion is a Dominican Prayer Book of more than 500 pages, with text in Latin hand­written in the Gothic book­hand style. It has just a single illustration—a grotesque inside a large blue “R” on the first page—but red and blue text is sprin­kled throughout. The dec­o­ra­tions are what char­ac­terize it as “illu­mi­nated.” The man­u­script includes com­po­nents of a Book of Hours, prayers that were to be said at spec­i­fied hours of the day, and the prayer cycle Office of the Dead, among other devotions. Tiny tabs extending from the edges of cer­tain pages indi­cate where par­tic­ular sec­tions begin. [Read the Full Article]

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/