Welcome to the inaugural post of the Digital Collections and Archives (DCA) blog. We at DCA are excited to share with you the wealth of great collections we hold in the archives. You can look forward to posts highlighting famous alums and events from Tufts’ history as well as updates on exhibits and trainings we are sponsoring. Ever wonder who a building or street on campus is named after? Well, keep checking the DCA blog and you just might find out! Wondering what the Tufts cannon looks like this week? Look for our recurring series, Cannon Shots!

Did you know that Tufts has a long history of Olympic athletes? Ted Vogel, class of 1949, competed in the Olympic marathon in 1948 and in 1952 Robert Backus, class of 1951, competed in the 16-pound hammer throw at the Helsinki Olympics. Tufts’ first female Olympian, Maren Seidler, is also one of the greatest athletes in U.S. Track and Field history. Seidler competed in four Olympics, including the tragic 1972 Munich games. She was the first American woman to throw the shot put more than 60 feet and still holds the U.S. record in this event.

For more information on Tufts Olympians, check out the DCA Department of Athletics collections and Rocky Carzo’s book, Jumbo Footprints: A History of Tufts Athletics, 1852-1999.

The primary season may be over, but that doesn't mean we don't still find interest in this image of former Democratic presidential candidate and Tufts University baseball team pitcher, Bill Richardson '70. (He's also had a few other jobs, including current Governor of New Mexico, congressman, Ambassador to the United Nations, Secretary of Energy -- and pitcher with an amateur baseball league!)

The Tufts Digital Library contains images of several candidates for office, including some lesser known political candidates. Here's one image of a mayoralty candidate distributing bathtub gin. And how about other governors who have run for president? Harold Stassen was the governor of Minnesota and a perennial presidential candidate with both the Republican and Alfalfa Parties. The Edward R. Murrow papers contains this image of Stassen being interviewed by Edward R. Murrow.

The DCA would like to welcome new and returning students to Tufts. The beginning of the academic year is always filled with excitement about the future. It is also fun to look to the past and think about how things were in days gone by.

Did you know that just prior to registration in 1938 a hurricane struck New England? Winds in Somerville topped 100 miles per hour, and 63 trees on the Tufts campus were uprooted. In this picture wind debris frames pre-registration students coming out of Goddard Chapel. You can read more about the hurricane of 1938 in our Concise Encyclopedia of Tufts History.

Long before SIS (Tufts online registration system), registration used to take place in Cousens Gymnasium. Students could circulate in the gym and meet faculty who were there to sign them up for their classes. This might look enjoyable or chaotic, depending on your perspective. View more images of registration in our Digital Library

I knew we had an eclectic collection, but searching for Halloweeny materials in the Tufts Digital Library showed me just how eclectic. For example, Walks in London, vol. 1 is a text in Tufts' Edwin C. Bolles collection on the history of London, and chapter 9, "In the Heart of the City" describes the Church of All Hallows, baptismal site of John Milton.

20th-century poet and Tufts English professor John Holmes reminisces in his poem "My old schools" about seeing his wife "waiting at that bus-stop / For me one rainy Halloween".

And of course, Tufts students have their own say about Halloween, as in this 1996 Halloween edition of the Tufts Daily that complains about the inadequate spookiness of Spooky World. Tufts students have Halloween traditions, as well; the Concise Encyclopedia of Tufts History lets us know that the Tufts Mountain Club puts pumpkins on top of Goddard Chapel every Halloween.

(If you aren't interested in Halloween, just wait a few more days and it will be time for Guy Fawkes Day and the commemoration of the gunpowder plot!)

Here are a few of the DCA staff's favorite images of Tufts football past.
Frederick "Fish" Ellis, 1926
John Baronian, approximately 1949

View more images of Tufts events revolving around dinner and dining, such as the Junior Dinner Dance pictured above. Not only has Tufts hosted formal dinners and commemorative banquets, but there was also a tradition in the Fletcher School of a "Faculty Waits on You" dinner. Sound fun?

Did you know that Tufts University has a special mace that is used in official ceremonies, such as presidential inaugurations and commencements? The mace was presented to Tufts as a gift of the Tufts Alumni Council and was first used in the inauguration of President Leonard Carmichael on November 4, 1938, as seen in the picture below.

A mace is a medieval weapon consisting of a heavy staff or club, and ornamental versions of these, often carried before officials, have become symbols of authority. The Tufts mace is made rosewood and polished brass, and includes the official seal of the University as the finial.

Tufts has had 15 presidents through the current president Lawrence S. Bacow. The DCA holds the records or the Office of the President, which includes photos and memorabilia of Tufts presidents from the first president Hosea Ballou to John A. DiBiaggio.

Today DCA staff attended disaster preparedness training. Among the many useful facts we learned (for example, long sleeves, gloves, and freezers are all key ingredients to a good disaster response), we learned the basics of how to deal with ash and soot. Ash and soot are greasy and gritty, get everywhere, and can't be brushed off like dust or mold, so a vacuum is needed to clean them up properly.

This made me wonder what would have been left if a vacuum had been used to clean up poor Jumbo after the Barnum Hall fire:

Disasters do happen. In the 1960s and 1970s Tufts suffered what Russell Miller calls "a plague of fires". The 1971 firebombing of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy resulted in considerable loss of "books, photographs, and other irreplaceable memorabilia".

Luckily, most of the Barnum collection's correspondence and memorabilia had already been deposited in the University Archives, and therefore escaped damage in the Barnum Hall fire. But what if the fire were here in our stacks? The more we learn about how to deal with soot and ash (not to mention water damage, pests, mold, and all the other disasters which can strike collections), the better prepared we will be to handle those disasters if they ever come.

Now I just need to remember my fire extinguisher training. Point, Aim, Squeeze, Sweep, right?

In Québec, the celebration of Winter Carnival breaks up the monotony of winter. Did you know that Tufts had its own tradition of celebrating Winter Carnival? In the 1950s and 1960s residential halls, fraternities, and other student organizations created impressive snow sculptures, like Zeta Psi's sculpture of Jumbo pictured here.

All the images we have of snow sculptures show that back in the day there was plenty of snow. Why no sculptures this year?

Darn you, Tufts Digital Library! When I began looking for Tufts resources about the Great Depression (hoping to make some clever parallels to the current grim economic news), I was expecting articles about bread lines and unemployment. Instead, I found this fascinating 1931 photograph of medical students Shizue Komu and Ethel Hideko Omori.

Further investigation led me to a number of interesting discoveries. I started looking further because our photograph was clearly miscatalogued due to a transcription error. Additionally, the women are labeled on the photograph itself as "Japanese girls", but web searches to confirm the mistaken name led me to evidence that Omori had been a premed student at the University of Hawaii in 1928. And now, thanks to the combined informative power of the Hawaii Medical Library's Archives and the Internet Archive, I learned that the Hawaii-born Omori received her degree from Tufts in 1935 before returning to Hawaii (via Japan) to become an OB/GYN. Along the way, I discovered that we have at least one more lovely photograph of these women, in which they look much happier, but which has not been scanned for our digital collections.

All of which is fascinating, except for four things. I got so distracted by this treasure hunt that I forgot I was supposed to leave the office over an hour ago; now I have a single photograph I'd like to add to the "to be digitized" queue; and tomorrow I will have cataloging that needs repairing. Plus, I just know I am going to go home and spend my evening trying to learn more about Komu.

Archives is fun, isn't it? *g*

Somebody tell nature to make winter go away.

In the hopes of encouraging spring, I thought I'd reflect Tufts' spring time traditions, such as Spring Sing. From 1941-1967 fraternities, sororities, and dormitory groups would prepare a song for a competition sponsored by the senior honor society, Tower Cross. This competition, which was judged by an outside judge, was usually held outside Miner Hall.

And if that doesn't sound like fun, consider Spring Fling. Spring Fling is held every April on the Medford Campus and may include a comedy show, block parties, and a concert on the President's Lawn. The musical line-up often includes nationally recognized acts. Yes, the ladies really do like cool James...

This Monday will be the 113th Boston Marathon, a holiday so important to Greater Boston that we celebrate it by reenacting the battles of Lexington and Concord. Here at Tufts, this seems like a good time to celebrate our own track team.

My favorite part of Patriots' Day isn't actually the marathon at all, but in the commemoration of Samuel Whittemore, an 80-year-old farmer. On April 17, 1775, Whittemore engaged a small troop of British soldiers. He was shot, bayoneted, and left for dead, not 2 miles from here -- but recovered, and lived for another 18 years, dying at the age of 98. And can I tell you how Samuel Whittemore survived? His wounds were treated by a Doctor Tufts, a relative of Tufts University's founder, Charles Tufts. May we all be so resilient as Samuel Whittemore.

Cousens Gym was constructed in 1931, and the main gym was intended to be large enough for special events, dances, and exams. It is still used for finals in large classes.

Maybe my mind is a little random, but when I think exams I think dentistry.

We have many great images of dental students and the School of Dental Medicine. Perhaps spring cleaning might include a trip to the dentist?

Lyndon B. Johnson, 1963

Elie Wiesel, 1986

Often, when I'm looking for good material for a blog post, I looked to see what materials the Tufts Digital Library has regarding current events. Today, I decided to look for materials about Iran. Of course, I forgot to bargain with the Fletcher School. Because of the Fletcher School and all the great materials they've given us on international politics, the Tufts Digital Library has loads of documents that discuss Iran, and my search was overwhelmed by the plethora of good materials and, to be honest, the unfocused nature of my search.

So I turned my attention instead to something which is on the minds of all Greater Boston folks these days:

The Medford, Boston, and Grafton campuses of Tufts are spending a lot of time damp this summer. I suppose it's good practice for later this month, when the staff of the DCA will get some disaster recovery training in how to rescue materials which have suffered from water damage, like this picture of Edward R. Murrow.

Any high level purpose, responsibility, or task assigned to to the accountability agenda of a corporate body by legislation, policy or mandate. Functions may be decomposed into sets of co-ordinated operations such as subfunctions, business processes, activities, tasks or transactions.

• manage records
• manage information
• raise funds
• conduct outreach (alumni relations)
• preserve records of enduring value
• provide information
• internal research
• historical analysis
• business analysis
• scan
• maintain electronic files in a persistent and trustworthy way
• Project management
• risk analysis
• conservation
• exhibit and event planning

• project management
• internal research
• historical analysis
• business analysis

• Office mother
• clown
• confidant
• moral supporter
• knower of random information
• word doc formatting professional
• listener
• skeptic
• baker

While cataloging images for Robert Wilkinson's Londina illustrata (c. 1825) I started noticing amusing details in the large engravings in this book of "graphic and historic memorials." For example, this engraving of St. Peter on Cornhill seems plain enough.

Until you take a closer look at the gravediggers in the church yard. If they are in fact digging a grave, why are there two skulls? If they are graverobbers, should they really be doing that while a woman and child walk by?

Or how about this image of the London Street Dockhead.

On closer examination I am worried about the people who are hanging out at the docks. I'll say no more.

Archival reference isn’t always about searching for the sparse facts that cleanly define an event or person in three sentences or less. It offers a microcosmic view of the interconnectedness of life and history - a question leads from one person to another, to an organization, to a piece of artwork and back to a person and then maybe three…on down the line until it relates to something I saw on television last week. Biographical research in particular allows me to study, if only for a brief time, a person long forgotten. But for the hour I spend, they come alive again - at least to me. The vocations and avocations of one individual - their choices and desires are illuminated - and I recall Mary Oliver’s words, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

One such person, whose life seems to have been both wild and precious, was Tufts professor Charles Ernest Fay. The bare bones of his story are that he was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts in 1846 and graduated from Tuft in 1868. Young Charles showed an aptitude for languages and was promptly employed by Tufts as a professor of modern languages, a post he would hold for 60 years. Of course, that’s the kind of information we find everyday - I’m getting to the internationally renowned part…

Fay’s life offers a bewilderingly wide array of organizational involvement. He was one of the founders of the Modern Language Association (MLA); a life member of the American Philological Association; president of the New England Modern Language Association; and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Fay was also a member of the Boston and Cambridge Shakespeare Clubs; the Boston Browning Society; the American Folk Lore Society; the Metropolitan Improvement League of Boston; and the Massachusetts Forestry Association.

But what might be the most bizarre, and to my mind interesting, aspect of Fay’s life is his international reputation as an alpinist. A dedicated lover of the outdoors since his youth, Fay, prior to the age of 50, had already climbed the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the Adirondacks, the Rockies, and the Sierra Madre. He had made 19 visits to the Selkirk Range of the Canadian Rockies by 1921, and was still climbing there at the age of 76. He climbed with and/or led many international groups, especially throughout the Canadian Rockies. Fay made two ascents of the peak known as "No. 1" in a chain known as the "Ten Peaks" of the Bow Range near Alberta. This peak, at 10,612 ft, was the second highest of the Ten Peaks and was named Mount Fay in 1904, in Fay's honor. At more than 80 years of age, Fay attended the camp of the Canadian Alpine Club - he hiked the 14 miles from the railway station to the camp and still had energy left over to attend the evening’s festivities. Fay's ascents often involved snowy peaks and treacherous ice fields, however, during his years as a mountain climber the only injury he sustained was a sprained ankle - a testament to his skill.

Fay was a charter member of the Appalachian Mountain Club and served as its president four times, and editing its journal “Appalachia” for 44 years. He remained heavily involved with the American Alpine Club (he was one of the founders), serving as president and journal editor. Fay was also in demand as a lecturer, including a series given in Washington DC and sponsored by National Geographic. He was also a prolific writer - the author of hundreds of articles. His activities brought him numerous honors, including membership in the English, French, and Italian Mountain Clubs, as well as Centro Excursionista de Catalune in Spain. While serving as a delegate to the International Congress of Alpine Clubs in 1920, Fay was knighted and made an officer of the Order of St. Charles by Prince Albert of Monaco. Fay completed his final climb just 6 months before his death in 1931 at the age of 84.

There’s more information to be found about Charles Fay and all the other remarkable, yet sometimes unknown, Tufts people at the Digital Collections and Archives.

One fine day this summer, I was at the beach with my family. Relaxing after a good swim, I had settled down on the beach with Meg Cabot's Big Boned, perfect reading for a sunny New England afternoon. But when I glanced over at family member lying next to me, he was reading Dan Dennett's Consciousness Explained. Now how can you get better than that for beach reading?

Of course this only made me sad that I didn't have a laptop and WiFi at the beach, because it made me want to spend some time with the open access collection of Dan Dennett's papers we have here at the Tufts Digital Library. After all, then we would have been able to have a conversation comparing the ideas in 1991's Consciousness Explained with 2006's "Two Steps Closer on Consciousness" or compare the discussion of qualia in the book with that alluded to in 2001's "The Zombic Hunch: Extinction of of an Intuition?".

...The best part of all this is that I am only half-kidding. We really did end up spending a fair amount of our beach afternoon discussing Dan Dennett's theories of consciousness, and it really did give me enough background to start understanding some of the papers in that open access collection. It was a fabulous way to spend a summer day.

Like many of my colleagues, I teach in the graduate schools at Simmons College. Unlike them, however, I don't teach in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. Instead, I teach a class at the Center for the Study of Children's Literature. My first class of the semester was last night, so you can imagine the children's literature is on my mind. With a local private school closing its library because they claim the future is digital, I've also been thinking a lot about my obligations to society as somebody who is responsible for putting digital materials online.

As an instructor, I know how many of the materials I want my students to read aren't available as electronic books, audio books, or Kindle. And as a digital archivist I feel like the struggling floodgate between the masses of undigitized materials behind me and the tiny puddle of digital materials in front of me. Outside of the archives, I'm not sure how many people realize what a tiny percentage of our material is available via the Internet.

Some of this, of course, is just because there's too much to do. Some, such as our audiotape collections, are too expensive to digitize. And some of the materials that are not online never will be. Copyright law is a strange and complex beast, and digital reproduction rights are hard to obtain. Returning to children's literature, it's unlikely that we will ever be able to make much of the Marc Brown collection's amazing selection of Arthur storyboards, character concepts, and scripts available online.

One of our many fantastic books about the history of London, H. Barton Baker's Stories of the Streets of London, describes the shop of John Newbery, publisher of Goody Two Shoes and popularizer of children's books as a form of entertainment. Our collection guide for the undergraduate honors theses tells me that in the undergraduate honors thesis collection for the Department of Child Development we hold a number of theses discussing children's literature. That's a good example of the kind of material you will lose access to if you believe that everything important is available online. One day, if the resources become available and the permissions issues get worked out, some of the historical scholarship might appear online, but it will only ever be a tiny segment of what exists in print.

On January 15, 1973 Senator Edward Kennedy addressed the Tufts Community and public at large on the topic of health reform. Below is an excerpt from the speech. If you would like to read the full text, please visit the Digital Collections and Archives, Tisch Library Building, ground floor from 9-4 Monday through Friday.

Senator Kennedy with Mr. and Mrs. David Slater, Mrs. Herbert Karol and Mrs. Burton C. Hallowell.

From Senator Edward M. Kennedy's speech, January 15, 1973:

"I am delighted to be here at Tufts and to participate in the development of a new program in community health and the delivery of health services. That this innovative approach to the study of health care issues is being carried out at the undergraduate level is remarkable - it reaffirms Tufts leadership position in the education and training of future health professionals.

Several years ago, Tufts sponsored the Northern New England Student Health Projects. Health Science students from across the country joined together to study the health care problems of Massachusetts communities. Much of what was pioneered by these students at Tufts has now been incorporated into traditional medical school curricula; and the common theme of those summer projects --- that health care is a basic human right --- has now been accepted by the majority of the health establishment.

But the question remains as to how to make that right a reality for all our citizens.

In recent days the news media have been focusing on the epic struggle shaping up between the Congress and the White House. Commentators describe the confrontation in constitutional terms; they ask when the Congress will assert itself in the development of foreign and domestic policy. this is a critical question. It is critical not only because the processes of policy development have been challenged by the President [Nixon], but because the focus of the existing programs would be altered if the White House is successful. And those alternations would be made behind closed doors, shrouded in secrecy, without the restraining influence of public accountability. . . ."

Because of the cool advertisements

From the following editions:
March 3, 1981
November 14, 1983
September 29, 1997

(Sorry this blog post is so late! We had a seven-hour power failure last week that derailed lots of inessentials.)

This led us straight to my second favorite reference book, The Oxford English Dictionary. (What's YOUR favorite reference book? Tell us in comments!) The OED told us "A subdivision of certain English shires, corresponding to the ‘hundred’ of other counties.". Huh. Curious, we read the etymology:

Now that's just cool.

Since the students have returned and we’re well into the fall semester, I thought it would be a good time to share some of my favorite Tom Hart photographs from the Tufts Digital Library.

Tom Hart was a 1968 graduate (B.S. in Biology) who documented life at Tufts while he was and student and after graduation. Though our earliest student photographs are charming reminders of a bygone era, I also enjoy Tom Hart’s photographic perspective in capturing the Tufts campus in the 1960s and 70s.

Wren Hall dorm room, October 1966

Class on breakwater, Cape Cod, spring 1966

Gordon Dobey, David Gold, Oscar Porter, and Peter Wadler pushing a car that was stuck in snow on College Ave, illuminated by headlights, 1976

In 1898, the 75 (!) women of Tufts College elected officers for a club to serve the intellectual and social needs of Tufts women - the All-Around Club. From 1903 on, every woman at Tufts or Jackson was considered a member of the club. The club organized receptions, dances, musical events, and faculty teas like the one pictured here.

The goal of the the club was "to promote unity and loyalty in the college; to further the social, intellectual, and athletic interests of the student body; and to encourage the personal responsibilities of its members." To that end, in addition to organizing social events, the club published Jackson College directories and guides, organized food drives, and provided a representative for the Student Council. But the late 1960s and early 1970s saw a rise in the number of new student organizations, and around that time the All-Around Club disappeared.

Not that the proliferation of clubs and organizations is a bad thing, but to the archivist's ears just having to track a single one-size-fits-all organization sound pretty good!

To learn more about the All-Around Club and see more pictures click here.

Honestly, It's not all that often that archivists come up in a public forum like the Daily Show. I'm not offended. Maybe I should be. But I get the joke because it's not the first time I have heard someone express surprise at the need for a Masters degree to be a librarian or an archivist. In fact, I think most people I meet have no idea what an archivist is, much less what kind of education is needed to land a professional job in the archives. When I told my family years ago that I was going to library school, they had no idea that you needed a masters to be bun wearing, shushing bibliophile.

So why all the education?

The answer is simple. It's really hard to get control over all of the bibliographic knowledge in the world. That's what I learned in library school and this is how I explain it to people wondering why librarians need all that education. I ask them to just think for a moment about every book, article, website, pamphlet, blog, correspondence, photo, and recording in the world, ever, since the beginning of history. Now think about organizing it all so you can find exactly what you're looking for. That's what librarians and archivists do and that's what we're trained to do. Basically we're control freaks with the altruistic goal of making the universe of information available to everyone. And I'm happy as long as I can do my small part as an archivist to get information to the people. Because information is power. Power to the People!

Ok. So, no one wonders why doctors or lawyers need a masters degree. But I'm over it, we don't need that kind of recognition. We're the masked crusaders of information. We're not worried that Jon Stewart doesn't know how we got that way. No, we're used to that. We're thinking about the issue at hand. What would you actually do with traces of drugs found on archival material? Seriously! In the context of the Grateful Dead, this kind of evidence could arguable have some archival research interest. Now don't you feel safer knowing that there are archivists out there thinking about that.

While the scenario is a little hokey, the basic ideas it presents -- obsolescence and migration -- are critical topics when dealing with digital materials. Nothing make one's heart sink faster than opening a box and finding a stack of 3.5 inch floppies with files of unknown format on them. Can you open the disks? Can you identify the file types? Are converters available for the file types? These are issues archivists deal with, sometimes on a daily basis. At DCA we have been working to create crosswalks that provide original file types with the MIME and format types listed and the corresponding preservation file types. This process has been a challenge, but it has also been really rewarding. We can open our boxes and stare down a stack of floppies without fear. We have a plan!