By some people, museum collections (of any kind) are romanticized as being ground-breaking treasures similar in importance, most radically to the Declaration of Independence. Although those objects obviously exist, that is not exactly the reality of some manuscript collections: most of the time, the collections are simpler, maybe even anti-heroic in scope. More likely, a manuscript collection is similar to the one that I first encountered at the PEM library: a collection pertaining to the everyday life of an ordinary member of the local community.
The first collection I encountered was the Archibald Wheel Company records and Edward A. Archibald papers. The Archibald Wheel Company was a wheel manufacturer active between 1867 and 1910, founded and co-owned by Edward A. Archibald (1838-1910) of Methuen, Massachusetts. Developed in the late 1860s, the Archibald Wheel Company provided spoked wheels for wagons. The Archibald Wheel Company quickly gained favor in the industry after 1869 with their patent for the machine that created iron-hubbed wheels, serving clientele across the United States from 1870 until the 1910s.
Meanwhile, Edward A. Archibald immigrated to Boston from Canada on April 15, 1852. Shortly after moving to Boston, Archibald married Addie E. on December 24, 1857, had 8 children, and then 10 years later started the Archibald Wheel Company. Besides running the Archibald Wheel Company, Archibald served multiple positions within his community, including as a trustee for the Essex Mechanics Association (1874), and as a deacon for the North Essex Congregational Church from approximately 1866 until his death in 1910.
Sounds thrilling, right? Sure, this collection may not contain undiscovered treasure and information relating to fame and glory; this collection simply contains documents relating to the Archibald Wheel Company and Edward A. Archibald. However, as any good historian and archivist knows, the treasure lies in the simplest of words and papers, and that rings true to this collection. History is made through the actions and interactions with a person and their world, and Edward A. Archibald interacted with his 19th century world through invention and business determination.
Edward A. Archibald and his Archibald Wheel Company served multiple communities in the mid to late 19th century by providing a patented state of the art wagon wheel, and the papers in this collection prove his grandeur. Edward A. Archibald also served his community religiously, and alongside his business papers, Archibald leaves behind his thoughts on the development and status of his beliefs into the 20th century.
Without Edward A. Archibald there would be no iron-hubbed wheel, which served both domestic and military purposes. Without Archibald (and the previous owner of his collection), the PEM library would not have this valuable collection pertaining to a local man grasping the American dream and creating a better world for himself and his community. That sounds pretty heroic to me.
For the next blog post, I will be describing the actual processing of this collection and how it only took two days to completely transform this collection into something valuable for researchers.
“To celebrate outstanding artistic and cultural creativity by collecting, stewarding, and interpreting objects of art and culture in ways that increase knowledge, enrich the spirit, engage the mind, and stimulate the senses” This passage is the first sentence of the mission statement for the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM), an internationally recognized art and cultural museum located just north of Boston, Massachusetts.
Alongside this 21st century museum are its outstanding collections, ranging from Native American artwork to grand artwork depicting 18th century maritime merchant ships. The museum creates a sense of wonder and imagination that tickles the senses and encourages new and bold ideas.
And then there are the bills. I am not talking about the bill for the millions of dollars to operate the museum: I am talking about the bill for .50$ for killing two hogs. Now this leaves to wonder: where does killing two hogs come into play in a cultural institution as grand as the PEM? The answer is in the collections, literally.
“To Killing Two Hogs”, 1846 Manuscript from the Martha Jane (Weston) Averill Collection at the Phillips Library
Among the thousands of artistic items curated in their museum facilities, the PEM also owns a library archive to store their millions of manuscripts donated throughout the 20th century to further the understanding of the culture of the North Shore area outside of Boston.
The PEM Library, known as the Phillips Library, is where I am currently conducting my archival internship. Under the supervision of the Phillips Library archivist, my summer work will consist of working with two manuscript collections through processing and developing new finding aids for each collection. These collections are the Archibald Wheel Company Records, and the Martha Jane (Weston) Averill Papers. The Archibald manuscript collection relates to the business work of Edward Archibald, inventor of the 19th century “iron-hubbed wheel,” while the Martha Jane (Weston) Averill papers consists of genealogical research notes and 18th century family manuscripts. Both collections contribute to a better historical understanding of Essex County in the 19th century. All very exciting!
I will be updating on my journey through the archives periodically, where I will be providing my experiences in working on these collections and images of the interesting pieces. Join me on my journey through the archives this summer to learn more about what lies within the PEM Library Archives.
As for the bill for killing two hogs, you will just have to wait and see!
This is a priority right now. I am hearing this phrase more and more as I continue to gain experience in the archival field. You may think that you are there to do one specific task, but sometimes circumstances arise that cause you to veer away from your original responsibility and focus on a new, more urgent task. This is the situation I find myself in currently; desegregation takes a back seat for now while materials on the Cocoanut Grove fire come to the forefront. This detour came about when Marta Crilly informed me that a Cocoanut Grove fire coalition group planned to visit the BCA sometime next week, and they needed to get a head start on digitizing materials.
The Cocoanut Grove fire is a well-known tragedy in the history of Boston which claimed the lives of almost 500 people in November of 1942, making it the deadliest known nightclub fire in the world. The Boston City Archives has three collections which contain material about the fire: the Boston City Hospital collection, the Law Department records, and the William Arthur Reilly collection. The materials are fascinating, with items ranging from death certificates to samples of the fabric that caught ablaze. The Boston City Hospital (BCH) items alone help set the stage for the modern treatment of burn victims in hospitals, while the materials from the Law Department put in place new fire and safety codes for the city: both of which were adopted nationwide.
Despite this, there are serious ethical concerns about making the material available to the public at this time. The most glaring issues come from the BCH, where patient names, addresses, telephone numbers, and medical records are listed on many of the documents. In addition, much of the literature explaining the treatment of burn victims is under copyright, and cannot be placed on the BCA website. In the Law Department, personal information appears in the form of real estate evaluations, insurance forms, and, most notably, the death certificates. One possibility is to redact all names and addresses of patients who survived and may still be alive, but until the legal side of this is figured out, the digitizing I am doing is limited to documents without names or personal information on them.
I continue to learn more about how archives operate each day of my internship, and some of the challenges they face. Prioritizing tasks is only one facet of this, but I welcome this short-term change of direction for me. I think that a break from the norm is never a bad thing, especially when the material is so interesting!
I decided to complete my internship at the Boston City Archives in West Roxbury thanks in part to the experience I had there during our Digital Archives class last semester. In that class we worked with Marta Crilly, the archivist for reference and outreach, to create exhibits for the class’s Omeka site on the desegregation of the Boston Public Schools. The main project for my internship is digitizing materials from the desegregation collections housed at the City Archives, and inputting metadata onto their digital repository, Preservica, for future use. This project is a continuation of the work of Lauren Prescott, a recently graduated student from our program.
I learned in the digital class that the desegregation collections house some interesting material to say the least. This past Wednesday while scanning some newspapers from the Fran Johnene collection, I came across an article from the May 1976 issue of The Boston News Digest. If you do not know, The Boston News Digest was a newspaper published by the anti-busing group Restore Our Alienated Rights (ROAR) in the mid-1970s. The article that caught my eye, however, has little to do with busing and more to do with current events.
The article, written at the height of racial tensions during the desegregation of Boston Public Schools, is entitled, “Boston’s Oppressed Minority.” You are probably thinking what I first thought, that this article is about the police treating minorities unfairly throughout the busing situation. However, I was (and you probably are) wrong– the article presents the members of the Boston Police Department as the oppressed minorities. This is an interesting piece to stumble upon in today’s world, where police oppression, and not police being oppressed, seems to be on the forefront of many national conversations.
It is the unique and fascinating items such as this that makes this experience so enjoyable. In fact, I am hoping to see if I can work with the materials for my Capstone project–updates of which are sure to come.
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.
*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 Paperson the BostonSchoolsDesegregation 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.
Archives in Turn: Interns in Archives 