During November and December, the Boston Summer Seminar (BSS) blog is profiling the four sites at which BSS participants are invited to conduct research during their residency in Boston. We hope these profiles will encourage you in your exploration of each institution’s holdings, and prompt helpful conversations with the Seminar Director and Seminar Archivists in preparing your proposal. This week we take a peek at the Archives & Special Collections at the Schlesinger Library.

Reading Room, Schlesinger Library

On August 26, 1943, Radcliffe College received from alumna Maud Wood Park (1898) her collection of books, papers, and memorabilia on the suffrage movement, in which she had been a leader. Park’s  “Woman’s Rights Collection” became the nucleus of a research library called the Women’s Archives.  Originally imagined to document the politics of women’s rights and reform, the collection was then expanded by Radcliffe College to encompass many other activities and ambitions of women. In 1965, it was renamed to honor Harvard University historian Arthur M. Schlesinger and his wife Elizabeth Bancroft Schlesinger, who had supported the effort from its beginning.

In the subsequent surge of a new women’s movement, as feminist activists highlighted the importance of women’s history and created their own documents and publications, the collections multiplied very rapidly and have continued to do so ever since. Now part of Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Schlesinger Library prides itself on being an outstanding repository for materials documenting women of the United States at home and abroad. With the finest collection of resources for research on the history of women in America, the library’s holdings are strong in: women’s rights and feminism; health and sexuality; work and family life; education and the professions; and culinary history and etiquette. Library holdings date from the founding of the United States to the present and include more than 3,200 manuscript collections (including personal papers, family collections and organizational records), 100,000 volumes of books and periodicals, and films, photos, and audiovisual material. The Library offers grants and has a regular program of in-house exhibits.

Materials from the Schlesinger collection

The Schlesinger Library is open to the public and welcomes all visitors. Several online tools are openly available for discovering materials of research interest. All Schlesinger holdings are cataloged in HOLLIS+, the Harvard Library discovery tool.  Schlesinger finding aids/inventories to manuscript collections are available in Harvard’s OASIS system. Harvard’s image catalog,  VIA contains over 40,000 photographs from the Library’s collections.  We invite researchers to explore these tools and to learn more about our collections from our subject guides.  While not an exhaustive list of subjects, the guides present a sampling of the variety of topics and materials available for research.  Please just Ask a Schlesinger Librarian for assistance. All researchers are encouraged to review our visitor’s guide in advance of a research visit. 

The library maintains a dynamic Facebook timeline as well as a recently launched Reading Room Twitter account. We encourage researchers to share their research finds on these social media channels. The Library also has a  Flickr stream  which is continually growing, offering a fun way to browse images and see more of the Library’s holdings.

~ Sarah Hutcheon, Reference Librarian, Schlesinger Library

During November and December, the Boston Summer Seminar (BSS) blog is profiling the four sites at which BSS participants are invited to conduct research during their residency in Boston. We hope these profiles will encourage you in your exploration of each institution’s holdings, and prompt helpful conversations with the Seminar Director and Seminar Archivists in preparing your proposal. This week we take a peek at the Archives & Special Collections at Northeastern University.

Snell Library, Northeastern University (Boston, Mass.)

The Archives and Special Collections at the Northeastern University Libraries houses and carefully curates a diverse and growing collection of historical records relating to Boston’s fight for social justice.  Their charge is to preserve the history of Boston’s social movements, including civil and political rights, immigrant rights, homelessness, and urban and environmental justice.  The Archives focus on the history of Boston’s African American, Chinese, LGBTQ, Latina/o and other communities, as well as Boston’s public infrastructure, neighborhoods, and natural environments. The primary source materials we collect and make available are used by community members, students, faculty, scholars, journalists, and others from across the world as the evidence on which stories, histories, and biographies are built.  The use of these records will lead to a deeper understanding of the past. An understanding of the past can help our society by inspiring the next generation of leaders to continue the fight for equal economic, political and social rights and opportunities. Continue reading →

Over the next six weeks, the Boston Summer Seminar (BSS) blog will be profiling the four sites at which BSS participants are invited to conduct research during their residency in Boston. We hope these profiles will encourage you in your exploration of each institution’s holdings, and prompt helpful conversations with the Seminar Director and Seminar Archivists in preparing your proposal. We begin this week with the 2015 host institution: the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Boston Summer Seminar meetings will be held Tuesdays and Thursdays in the intimate space of the MHS Seminar Room. MHS Photo Archives.

Founded in 1791 the Massachusetts Historical Society is an invaluable resource for American history, life, and culture. Its extraordinary collections tell the story of America through millions of rare and unique documents, artifacts, and national treasures, including the personal papers of three presidents—John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and Thomas Jefferson–and their families. Through its research library, online resources, publications, exhibitions, and programs, the MHS makes its holdings accessible to anyone with an interest in the people and events that shaped our country. Spanning four centuries, the Society’s collections—the letters, diaries, and other personal papers of individuals and families, as well as their books, photographs, pamphlets, maps, newspapers, historical artifacts, and works of art—have become essential primary sources for the study and understanding of American history. It is possible to see, from the wide variety of projects which have been awarded fellowship funding in recent years, that the MHS collection supports a broad range of topical and methodological inquiry. Continue reading →