Associated Press: Hundreds of Salem Witch Trials documents get new home. “Hundreds of court documents from the 1692 Salem Witch Trials are being transferred from the Salem museum where they have been stored for more than four decades to the newly expanded Judicial Archives facility in Boston.”
News@Northeastern: The Harriet Tubman House May Be Gone, But Its Legacy Is Preserved Forever Thanks To Northeastern’s Library. “The house was a fixture of Boston’s Black community, but its century-spanning history–the kind that doesn’t get told in museums or textbooks–was in danger of getting lost with the demolition too. Fortunately, the building’s history and the community’s memories were saved through the hard work of residents who banded together under the I Am Harriet coalition, USES itself and the resources and ingenuity of the Boston Research Center.”
City of Boston: The Mary Eliza Project: Ward 11 Voter Records Now Available. “In Dorchester’s Ward 11, over 1500 women registered to vote between August 12 and October 13, 1920. We have finished transcribing the Ward 11 Women’s Voter Registers and the data is now available at Analyze Boston.”
News@Northeastern: The Future Of Historical Tourism Is On Your Phone. “In Malden, Massachusetts, history always sits just beneath the surface–sometimes all it takes is a cell phone to uncover it. That’s the premise of ‘Chronosquad,’ a new augmented reality game that takes players on a guided historical tour through the streets of Malden, a small city north of Boston. It’s an unconventional way to expose the city’s 373 years of history, but one that cities and tourism companies are now using to attract tourists in the age of COVID-19.”
City of Boston: Boston Archaeology Program Announces Completion Of NEH-funded Digital Archaeology Project. “In March 2019, the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded the City of Boston Archaeology Program a $350,000 Humanities Collections and Reference Resources grant to re-process, re-catalog, digitally photograph and place online in a database the complete archaeological assemblages excavated from five important Boston historical sites…. With this project, the collections are fully documented and anyone from anywhere in the world can see these collections online or study them in person at the City Archaeology Program.”
Armenian Mirror-Spectator: Armenians of Whitinsville Website Unveiled at Project SAVE Webinar. “On June 16, Project SAVE Armenian Photograph Archive delved into the world of Whitinsville, a small town in central Massachusetts with one of the oldest Armenian communities in the state. This presentation was cosponsored by the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research and the Armenian Cultural Center.”
City of Boston: City Archives Awarded Recordings At Risk Grant. “The Boston City Archives is thrilled to announce that it has been selected as the recipient of a $39,155 Recordings at Risk grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources. The grant will fund ‘Preserving Boston’s Voices: Digitizing the Boston 200 Community Oral History Collection’, a project to digitize oral history recordings of Boston residents collected as part of the Boston 200 Neighborhood History Program in the 1970s.”
City of Boston: City Of Boston Archaeology Program Goes Digital. “In the fall of 2019, the City of Boston Archaeology Program began the process of fully digitizing some of its most significant collections of artifacts. Funded by a $350,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Program hired Project Archaeologist Lauryn Sharp and Digital Archaeologist Nadia Kline to complete the project. The goal of the project is to make the collections accessible online through a searchable artifact database.”
The Enterprise Falmouth: Falmouth Public Library Unveils New Digital Collection. “Two years after receiving a grant to digitally preserve Falmouth’s history, the Falmouth Public Library is ready to unveil its new digital collection—Postcards From Falmouth: The Oral Histories. The project is an ongoing effort to curate a series of oral histories based on the library’s extensive collection of historical postcards. Kim DeWall, head of technical services at FPL, was the grant manager for this project, which began in 2019 after the library was awarded funds through the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners under the Library Services Technology Act.”
Internet Archive: Boston Phoenix Rises Again With New Online Access. “For more than 40 years, The Boston Phoenix was the city’s largest alternative weekly in covering local politics, arts, and culture….With the advent of online advertising, it struggled like many independent newspapers to compete. In 2013, the Phoenix folded. After the publication shut down, owner Stephen Mindich wanted the public to be able to access back issues of the Phoenix.”
Bay State Banner: Black, queer and part of Boston’s history. “Inspired by the racial reckonings of 2020, The History Project, New England’s largest archives of LGBTQ materials, is working to flesh out its collection related to Black queer history. Funded by a Mass Humanities Digital Capacity Grant and spearheaded by Community Curator Fellow Micha Broadnax and Community Connector slandie prinston, Documenting Black Queer Boston will provide physical and digital records for the community to experience and build on.”
Boston Public Library: Boston Public Library makes historical images available for use in Wikipedia. “In celebration of Wikipedia’s 20th anniversary on January 15th, Boston Public Library has uploaded more than 8,000 historical photographs from its archival collections to Wikimedia Commons. These images include some of the library’s most important photographic collections, and contribute to the single largest batch of uploads ever contributed to Wikimedia Commons. By uploading these public domain images, BPL is making them available so that they can be freely used to enhance Wikipedia articles, re-printed in publications, or incorporated in student projects and papers.”
Mass Live: Salem preserves 400 year old documents, creates online database for public to search about Joshua Ward House, genealogy and more. “Salem’s typically filled with ghost tours, visitors walking through cemeteries and other haunted happenings. This year, however, the city is discouraging visitors due to the coronavirus pandemic. But that doesn’t mean people can’t still discover the stories behind the well-known city. The city of Salem has been working with Laserfiche, a software company, for about three years to preserve some of its oldest documents, creating an online database for the public to search.”
Boston Globe: Essex Heritage launches online database for outdoor and cultural resources. “Imagine browsing through the history of the Salem Witch Trials , the Whittier Home in Amesbury where American Quaker poet and abolitionist John Whittier wrote much of his work, and the Custom House Maritime Museum in Newburyport all from the comfort of your home, These and other historical and cultural sites are featured in a new website crafted by the Essex National Heritage Commission in response to the COVID-19 pandemic that has shuttered these sites and cultural resources across Massachusetts and the country.”
State Library of Massachusetts: The Legislative Paper Processing Project at State Library. “For each collection, [the] work includes biographical research on the legislator; an initial survey of the unprocessed papers; writing a processing plan, including deciding on series and arrangement; sorting the papers; re-housing materials when necessary; writing a finding aid; creating a record for our online catalog; and depositing the finding aid in our digital repository, DSpace. They will also write a blog post for each completed collection.”
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