Preservation and Outreach: A Digital Archives Internship

By: Lauren Prescott

In spring 2016, I completed a digital archives internship at Boston City Archives with archivist Marta Crilly. Established in 1988, in an old school building in Hyde Park, the archives (now located in spacious location in West Roxbury), holds documentation of the history of Boston from the 17th century to present. Some notable collections in the archive include documentation of Boston’s role in the Civil War, immigration records, city council records, and Boston Public Schools (BPS) desegregation records. My interest in digital archives, as well as my experience in History 630, the digital archives class working with Boston Public Schools’ desegregation records, made this internship a perfect fit for me.

Desegregation

A report from the Massachusetts State Board of Education on the racial imbalance in schools, circa 1965.

In 1961, the NAACP met with the Boston School Committee in an attempt to get the committee to acknowledge the racial imbalance of Boston Public Schools. The School Committee refused to acknowledge the presence of segregation for over a decade. In the 1971-1972 school year, enrollment in the public schools totaled 61 percent white, 32 percent black, and other minorities comprised the remaining 7 percent. However, 84 percent of the white students attended schools that were more than 80 percent white, and 62 percent of the black pupils attended schools that were more than 70 percent black. Also, during this time, at least 80 percent of Boston’s schools were segregated.[1]

Eventually, the NAACP filed a lawsuit in Federal district court in 1972, known as Morgan vs. Hennigan. The case came before Judge Wendell Arthur Garrity Jr., who made his decision on June 21, 1974. He found that “racial segregation permeates schools in all areas of the city, all grade levels, and all types of schools.”[2] The court ordered that the school committee immediately implement a desegregation plan for its schools. Garrity’s decision met with a myriad of responses from hostility and protest to submission and acceptance. Parents, teachers, politicians, and even students voiced their opinion in various ways; many sent heartfelt letters to Judge Garrity and Mayor Kevin White.*

Digital Preservation

A letter sent to Mayor Kevin White urging him to ask Senator Barry Goldwater for help regarding desegregation and busing.

In the digital age, archivists face challenges of acquiring and preserving electronically generated records. In addition to this, archives are constantly under pressure to make their collections more accessible, through online finding aids or digitizing collections.[3] Some repositories use Institutional Repositories (IRs) for “collecting, preserving, and disseminating the intellectual output of an institution” in digital form.[4] Boston City Archives has recently begun using Preservica to keep their digital files safe and share content with the public. Preservica does not necessarily constitute an institutional repository; but, as digital preservation software, it keeps digital files safe and accessible for institutions. Preservica contains Open Archival Information System (OAIS)-compliant workflows for “ingest, data management, storage, access, administration and preservation…”[5] In addition, Preservica allows institutions to share this digitized content with the public.

Desegregation Records

For my internship, I began the process of digitizing the Boston City Archive’s desegregation records. Because the archive contains a plethora of desegregation records spread through numerous collections, I was not able to digitize everything. This semester I worked with the School Committee Secretary Files, the Mayor John F. Collins Records and the Kevin White Papers. Not every single document can be digitized, so I was responsible for choosing records that are important to understanding the desegregation of Boston public schools. In some cases, I digitized only a few documents in one box, and in others I was digitizing entire folders.

An important part of the internship involved writing metadata. Metadata is “data about data” and provides descriptive language about a record, “such as proper names, dates, places, type, technical information, and rights.”[6] Metadata constitutes a critically important piece of digitization; without it, digital objects would prove inaccessible and futile over time. If archives presented digitized images without identifiable information, researchers could not, with certainty, understand the context surrounding the document’s content!

I wrote metadata for each document and included information such as title, unique identifier, date created, creator, city, neighborhood, description, collection name and number, box and folder location, type, language, access condition and Library of Congress subject headings (LCSH). Inputting the metadata was easier than expected, thanks to last spring’s Digital Archives class.

An angry letter sent to Mayor Kevin White from a resident of South Boston who does not believe that the mayor should have “interfered” with the School Committee. The letter has been redacted.

Redaction of sensitive or private information constituted another major component of the internship. I primarily redacted letters written to Mayor John F. Collins and Mayor Kevin H. White regarding desegregation of Boston Public Schools. John F. Collins served as Boston’s mayor from 1960 until 1968. While he played no official role in the desegregation of Boston Public Schools or the subsequent busing of students in the early 1970s, Mayor Collins still dealt with the problem of racial imbalance during his term. Since many of the letters expressed hostile and, in some cases, racist views, the archivist decided to redact the names and contact information of the authors. Documents written by politicians, federal and local government employees and other public figures did not require redacting.

The majority of the documents I digitized came from the Kevin H. White Papers. Kevin White served as the mayor of Boston from 1968 through 1984; this period spanned the desegregation of public schools. Documents digitized from this collection included police logs sent the mayor’s office, departmental communications, statements from the mayor and a plethora of letters, both against and in support of the mayor.

I worked with the Kevin H. White papers last semester when I created an online exhibit for class, so I was familiar with the collection; but, I still felt surprised by some of the letters I read this semester. Many of the letters Mayor White received in the 1970s were hostile and racist. Mayor White did not just receive letters from angry Boston parents, he also received letters from people in the South who had already experienced desegregation in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as several letters from other countries.

Hand-drawn covers containing letters from fourth and fifth grade students at the Maurice J. Tobin School in Roxbury.

Letters written by children were my favorite documents.

Students of all ages had opinions of their own and even offered suggestions to Mayor White. Click here to learn more about students’ responses to desegregation and read a sampling of letters written by students at the time. Letters poured in to Mayor White’s office from students in Boston and all over the country. Most students were against busing, but mainly because they were afraid of potential violence. I digitized some letters from the advanced fourth and fifth grade classes at the Maurice J. Tobin School in Roxbury. The students were worried that the administration would remove advanced classes during Phase II of desegregation and wrote to Mayor White to express their concerns.

My internship at Boston City Archives was one of the best I have had throughout my academic career. Working directly with professionals in the field on an important project is gratifying. The purpose of the project was two-fold: digitally preserve documents relating to an important time in Boston’s history, and to share these desegregation documents with a wider audience. Not everyone can go to an archive and spend time doing research. The project to digitize Boston City Archive’s desegregation records is not over. I have digitized only a portion of the records and others will continue where I left off.

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*For more information about the letters sent to Mayor Kevin White, see the finding aid to: the Mayor Kevin H. White records, 1929-1999 (Bulk, 1968-1983) at Boston City Archives; to learn more about the the letters sent to Judge Garrity, see the finding aid for the Papers on the Boston Schools Desegregation Case 1972-1997 at UMass Boston’s University Archives and Special Collections, in the Joseph P. Healey Library. This collection contains the chambers papers of Judge W. Arthur Garrity, Jr. 

References

[1] School Desegregation in Boston: A Staff Report Prepared for the Hearing of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in Boston, Massachusetts, June 1975. Washington: Commission, 1975, 20.
[2] Ibid., 71.
[3] Christina Zamon. The Lone Arranger: Succeeding in a Small Repository. Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2012, 39.
[4] Ibid., 45
[5] “Preservica.” How Preservica Works. Accessed May 13, 2016. http://preservica.com/preservica-works/.
[6] The Lone Arranger, 47.

Legacy in the Archives: Mayor Menino’s Office of Neighborhood Services

By: Ashley Kennedy-MacDougall

I began my internship at the City of Boston Archives in September 2015 under the direction of Marta Crilly, Archivist for Reference and Outreach. I was able to work on the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services series from the collection of Mayor Thomas Menino. Boston’s Mayor Thomas Menino (December 27, 1942 – October 30, 2014) served from 1993-2014, and emphasized the importance of neighborhood development and city services to the neighborhoods such as trash removal, plowing, street sweeping, pothole repair. The Office of Neighborhood Services (ONS) was formed to ensure the needs of city constituents were heard and addressed. Each neighborhood of Boston was assigned a coordinator who was involved with addressing and aiding to resolve various types of constituent issues that often required coordination with other city departments such as the Inspectional Services Department and the Zoning Board of Appeals. The coordinators were also involved in the local neighborhood associations and other civic organizations of their area.

The records in this series consisted of paper materials collected by the neighborhoods’ ONS coordinators and included correspondence, meeting notes, minutes, and event plans, as well as materials from various city departments including the Boston Transportation Department, Boston Inspectional Services Department, Boston Conservation Commission, Boston Landmark Commission, and the Boston Redevelopment Authority. The correspondence, fliers, and meeting notes of various neighborhood associations were also included. The dates of the materials ranged from 1987 to 2013, with the bulk of the material falling between 1995-2013.

As Marta had explained to me when I began, some of the materials had been collected directly from the current coordinators’ desks at the end of Mayor Menino’s administration, so the level of organization would vary from box to box. The first order of business was to survey the materials and identify which neighborhood or coordinators they belonged to. This was not too difficult to discern because there were personal notes written on the coordinators’ personal letterhead intermingled with the records. I began processing the materials, which consisted of removing paperclips, flattening brochures or folded papers, re-foldering when needed, flagging for sensitive materials, photographs, or newspaper, and weeding duplicates or unneeded materials such as the coordinators’ handwritten notes and call sheets.

The processing experience differed for each coordinator’s materials – some coordinators were organized and had assembled their materials in labelled folders, other boxes contained piles of unfoldered, loose documents or unlabeled hanging folders. The boxes containing hanging folders required complete re-foldering and dating of the folders, and the boxes of loose materials required me to find an order in the materials and create folder titles and dates. While these materials required the most time to process, having to closely read and inspect the documents was especially interesting as it revealed how local government interacted with its constituents and vice versa.

Figure 1 – Loose materials prior to processing

Figure 2 – A box of processed materials

Once I had completed processing all the neighborhoods’ materials, as well series of street sweeping records, Zoning Board of Appeal records, and architectural plans, all of the boxes were brought out so that I could arrange them in alphabetical order by neighborhood, consolidate neighborhood materials together, and incorporate 7 boxes of previously processed materials from South Boston and Charlestown. This organizing was challenging because there was some overlap in neighborhoods and coordinators, and when there was more than one coordinator over the 18 year span I separated the materials where I could, but this was not always possible. Once the boxes were in order, I began condensing them, pulling materials from the next box into boxes that were not full. I then numbered them, incorporating the previously processed boxes, for a total of 30 boxes, not including the three boxes of materials that were pulled for destruction.

The next step was to enter the folders into Archives Space. This was my first experience with this software, but it was very easy to learn. I would start a neighborhood by creating a subseries which was named after the neighborhood, and assign a date range. The folders titles and date ranges were then entered under their neighborhood. This process also varied from box to box, as the folders I had made were already dated and were much faster to enter then the folders I had to date as I was entering. After entering the folder information I had to go back to each folder to assign it a location in the records room because unfortunately this info wasn’t able to be entered with the initial folder information, so that added time to the process as well. I also created a scope and contents note to the series, which gave an overview of the types of materials contained within the series.

I really enjoyed my experience at the City of Boston Archives. Getting hands on experience is so essential for an archives student because there are some experiences that can’t be relayed through text books. While sorting through the records when I first began was intimidating, after becoming familiar with the materials and the processing experience, I gained confidence in my abilities and knowledge of the series. In time I was able to date folders, pull materials for destruction, and organize the materials into folders with confidence. Gaining experience with the Archives Space software was also important and less difficult than I would have imagined.

I also learned a lot about Boston, local government, and Mayor Menino’s administration. Through these records, Menino’s legacy as a mayor who was dedicated to the growth and improvement of his city and its neighborhoods is reflected. One of the reasons I became interested in archives is the opportunity to learn something new every day, and this experience reinforced that.

Figure 3 – Photo of Mayor Menino at the Annual Kite Festival in Franklin Park, c. 1995

The Boston 200 Collection: A Processing Experience

By: Laura Kintz

During the Fall 2015 semester, I had the opportunity to complete my required archives internship at the City of Boston Archives in West Roxbury. This was a wonderful learning experience that allowed me work on processing an important archival collection: the records of the Boston 200 Corporation, which planned and managed the city’s United States Bicentennial celebrations in 1975 and 1976.

Before beginning this internship, my processing experience was limited to the Spring 2015 Archival Methods and Practices course, in which we processed the collection of the Jamaica Plain Historical Society. That project was very challenging because I worked mainly with photographs for which there was no significant original order; they were just unorganized, loose photos with very little, if any, identifying information. In addition, the JPHS did not have an established archival collections policy, so much of the work we did was from scratch. Processing the Boston 200 collection gave me the chance to work with institutional records that are probably more typical of the type of materials that I would work with in future processing projects at an established archive.

The Boston 200 collection specifically consists of the records of the Boston 200 Corporation, which planned and managed Boston’s United States Bicentennial celebration. The celebratory events took place mainly in 1975 and 1976, but the records that I processed date as far back at the late 1960s through the late 1970s. The corporation itself was in operation from 1972 until 1976. In its pre-processed state, the collection consisted of boxes of file folders most likely from filing cabinets or office drawers, with occasional miscellaneous materials in manila envelopes or just loose inside the boxes. The collection is divided into series based on the specific program areas of Boston 200. Of approximately 200 total boxes in the collection, I processed 20. I was able to condense the original 20 boxes into a finished product of 14 boxes. This included part of the Visitor Services series and all of the Neighborhoods series and the Environmental Improvements series.

Unprocessed box

My job was, in short, to make order out of disorder. The biggest part of this task was refoldering, since the original folders were not in very good condition nor were they acid-free, and acid-free folders are the standard for archival document storage. The folders already had labels, and in most cases I could just keep the same labels as my new folder titles. There were some exceptions to this rule; I occasionally encountered folder titles that did not accurately reflect their folders’ contents, and in those cases, I created new ones. The main reason for doing that is so that a researcher looking at the list of folders in the collection can determine which folders will be helpful; an inaccurate folder title would be misleading and waste the researcher’s time. To indicate that a folder title was of my own creation, and not the original title, I put it in brackets. In addition to the title, I also added a date range to the folder label.

Processed box

Just as important as processing a collection is making it accessible. Towards that end, after completing the processing of each box, I cataloged it using the ArchivesSpace platform so that the collection will be searchable on the City of Boston Archives website. ArchivesSpace allows for the hierarchical entry of information that can be migrated into a finding aid. I entered folder information at the “file” level underneath the appropriate series within the collection. The most important information that ArchivesSpace captures is the folder title and dates, but I also added information related to the document type (always “paper,” except in the case of photographs) and the materials’ physical location in the storage room. This example shows my entry for a folder titled “Neighborhood History Series booklets” and dated 1975-1976, which I entered as a file unit under the Neighborhoods series.

ArchivesSpace

The majority of the materials that I processed and cataloged were textual, but I did encounter some photographs as well. There were two general types of photographs: those that documented Boston 200 activities and those that did not. Photos in the latter category were related to things like advertising or proposals from potential vendors. This distinction is important because I handled these two types of photos in different ways. For the unrelated photos, all I did was insert them into mylar photo sleeves and return them to their original folders. When I found photos related to Boston 200 activities, on the other hand, I separated them out to add them to their own Boston 200 Photographs series. I gave each of these photos their own identifying number (or digital identifier), inserted them into mylar photo sleeves, scanned them, uploaded them to the city archives’ Flickr page, added identifying and copyright information, and entered them into ArchiveSpace (at the item level, not just the folder level). I also put the photos into their own folders with titles that corresponded to the folder that they originally came from. Most photographs that I encountered did not have any identifying information, but in the interest of time, I did not do much research to identify people or places were not recognizable. That is where the Flickr platform can come in handy; the site allows registered users to view and comment on photos, and users have occasionally been able to identify people and places in city archives’ photos that staff could not identify. Below is a screenshot of the Flickr page, as well as three examples of photos that I scanned and cataloged.

Photo in Boston 200 Photographs Flickr album

Woman posing with Early Music Month sign
Credit: Boston 200 records, Collection # 0279.001, Photographs, Boston City Archives, Boston

Participants in neighborhood cleanup
Credit: Boston 200 records, Collection # 0279.001, Photographs, Boston City Archives, Boston

Boston Tea Party poster contest participant
Credit: Boston 200 records, Collection # 0279.001, Photographs, Boston City Archives, Boston

While the overall experience of processing a collection was the highlight of my internship experience, I also gained insight into the wide variety of research topics that just one archival collection can represent, beyond those that might seem obvious. My initial excitement in being assigned this collection was that in Monica Pelayo’s Fall 2014 Public History Colloquium, we read a book called The Spirit of 1976 that discussed United States Bicentennial celebrations from a critical public history perspective. I was interested to see how this collection could fit into public history discussions of national celebrations. It certainly would be a valuable resource for research on that topic, but its potential is so much greater. Materials in the collection document the logistics of planning such a massive celebration, which could be used by someone studying, for example, the failure of Boston’s 2020 Olympics bid. The collection also documents the vast number of improvements made to the city’s tourism infrastructure, which could be used by someone studying the history of tourism in Boston. It includes materials related to significant historic preservation projects, which could be used by someone studying the history of the Freedom Trail or Black Heritage Trail and improvements made to the city’s historic sites. It also documents a turbulent time in the city’s history, and its records provide insight into urban renewal and race relations. The research possibilities really are endless.

The Boston 200 collection is a valuable asset to the City of Boston Archives. I am so glad that I had the opportunity to hone my processing skills with this collection and to further my understanding of the wide variety of uses for archival collections. I know that I will take what I have learned with me as I continue my archival career.