Raiders of Lost History

By Christina Manzo, Digital Projects Intern
February 17, 2012

Over the course of this grant project, the Boston Public Library team has been lucky enough to visit some of the prettiest libraries that the state has to offer. From small, redbrick buildings to newly renovated structures, I would safely boast that Massachusetts has some of the prettiest libraries in the country. So when we pulled up to a storage facility in Mattapoisett, we were all a little unsure of what to expect. But if there’s anything I’ve learned from working at the BPL, it’s that you find the most interesting items in the oddest places. When we first entered the facility, we were taken to a private room where we could examine the collection proposed for digitization by the Mattapoisett Free Public Library. The boxes were pulled from a giant storage warehouse not unlike the one from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Contained within was the complete, half-century run of a local newspaper called The Presto Press, a magazine-format serial publication that  included everything from want-ads to local historical and genealogical information.

The first thing that strikes you about The Presto Press is the cover art. The publisher, Donald Jason, was a talented artist and illustrated a good majority of the covers  himself. The real prize at the bottom of these serial boxes, however, is the advertisements. Normally, readers tend to skim over advertisements in any publication. When the publication is historic, however, the ads become a window into the miniscule, almost negligible parts of history that often get overlooked.

For example, in The Presto Press, you could see ads for a number of items, services, and local businesses, including some that are still around today. The fact that you can discover the price of roast beef or milk ($0.75 per pound and $0.45 per gallon respectively) or how sewing machine companies tried to reach women of that era, is simply amazing. These are aspects of history that are largely ignored, but they play a role in how we understand our past.

It’s like having our own local version of Mad Men. By comparing an add for a sewing machine from 1955…

to how the same product is portrayed today…

we can see how the country, its people, and the world has changed over time.

With or without the trademark fedora and whip, I think it’s undeniable that all librarians have a little bit of Indy in them. Even if they don’t escape from snake pits or hijack any German U-boats.

National Library Week

By Christina Manzo, Digital Projects Intern
April 11, 2012

As many of you know, last week was National Library Week, a time meant to celebrate the contributions libraries and their workers make in their communities. So in honor of this recent celebration, I thought that I would take a moment to put the spotlight on the men and women that work behind the scenes at the BPL to make the statewide digitization project possible.

I asked a few staff members to share their favorite memories of the project so far and the following were the responses I received:

“The panoramas from the Lowell Historical Society have been my favorite so far. When the eye looks at something, its perspective is so limited that you miss a lot of what’s going on. But with a panorama, you can allow yourself to see a full image, 180 or 360 degrees around. I take panorama photos myself, so I can appreciate how difficult it can be to capture that full image.”

“One of my favorite moments came during an application exchange. During our exchange, Susan Aprill from the Kingston Public Library told me that she had ALREADY used yearbooks that we had scanned for the Holmes Public Library in Halifax, as Kingston is part of the same regional high school.  At that point, they really hadn’t been available online for that long and it was just excellent to hear that the project was already having an impact.”

“One of my favorite moments was at the Halifax Historical Society Museum. We were browsing through the display of historic photographs and prints (many of which had to do with a local chicken industry) hanging from the walls and upon the shelves. As I began to look at some of them more closely, I noticed that they all had numeric designations stickered to them. I asked if these numbers were related to some type of cataloging system. Not only was this indeed the case, but we were then presented with several large binders filled with accession records, item descriptions, and provenance information for each item. This type of record keeping makes digitization and online delivery so much more efficient and meaningful. Once the photos and prints are digitized, these records will also be converted into electronic form so that users can search the collection more precisely.”

“Several institutions have told us that digitizing the resources themselves, or through vendors, would have been financially, very difficult or impossible. I would say that is my favorite part of the job. When we get to help people that wouldn’t have been able to participate in a project like this alone. Working on this project really makes me feel like were are making, in some small way, a difference to these institutions and the communities they serve, as well as making a positive contribution towards making Massachusetts’ rich cultural heritage resources available online.”

And as for me? Well, I could tell you that I love my job and that every day working here is a new adventure and lament the fact that it’s impossible to choose just one memory, but in the end, one moment sticks out pretty clearly.

I had just started here and I was looking for what I defined as ‘really cool stuff’ in the state of Massachusetts to digitize. I wanted to bring only the best and the ‘coolest stuff’ into our collection. One day, I happened to ask my boss if we had already digitized a particular collection of photographs, and he replied, “Probably, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take the project.” At that point, I was a little confused. Wasn’t my job to find this ‘really cool stuff’, these one-of-a-kind, priceless, not-to-be-repeated materials that would make people go ‘oooh’ and ‘ahhhh’? As I learned that day, no, it was not.

“It’s all about what’s going to help them. We might have a million copies of the same photo upstairs, but in the end, it’s part of their collection and it’s important to them, so it’s a project worth taking.”

A small moment to be sure, but it radically changed the way I looked at my job and this grant project. I stopped looking for the really cool stuff and started looking for libraries that we could help, if only in some small way. And what I found out was that you find the absolute coolest stuff in the most random places. Like Bette Davis’s class yearbook, or handwritten 18^th century intentions of marriage (found in a church basement), or even land settlements between the Pilgrims and Native Americans.

These are the people who make it possible for said objects to be found, scanned, and delivered – casting these materials out of obscurity and thrown into the public eye once more. They devote their time and their talents because they believe that this project is important. So no matter what week it is, I think these people deserve not only respect, but acclamation as well.

Happy belated National Library Week everyone!

Digitizing the Banns

By Christina Manzo, Digital Projects Intern
March 22, 2012

“I pay very little regard to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person.”
-Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

Given my relative youth, it’s a wonder that I would even think about writing a blog post about marriage. Luckily for me, I don’t want to talk about the institution of marriage as much as the significance of the historical process.

Recently, the Boston Public Library’s digitization team brought in a group of handwritten 18th and 19th century marriage intention certificates from the Holmes Public Library in Halifax, MA. These documents are part of the town’s Congregational Church records.

As I have always held some level of fascination concerning this particular period, these documents immediately piqued my interest. Historically, the requirement of an intention of marriage has been an incredibly restrictive one.

During this time period, the act of marriage was not seen as a pact between two people as much as it was seen as the responsibility of the entire surrounding town. To ensure that the entire town or village approved of the match, the intention of marriage had to be filed. Typically, these forms would include names, counties of origin, the professions of the brides and grooms, the dates on which the forms were filed, and official signatures.

This intention was then printed and distributed throughout the town as a flier that would be hung on post offices, schools, general stores, etc. The marriage then had to be announced in church on three consecutive Sundays or Holy Days, which would give the  townsfolk the opportunity to object to the marriage. This was referred to as  ‘Crying the Banns,’ which still occurs for couples intending to marry within the Church of England. It ended many couples impending nuptials, especially in the case of a discrepancy in class or social standing. Laws such as The Marriage Act of 1753, made it almost impossible for couples to bridge the social gap between their two classes. As a result, many weddings blossomed not out of love and respect, but out of the security of knowing that your match would not be rejected.

During this time period, many women lamented the matrimonial process, including such famous people as Mary Darby Robinson and Jane Austen. Robinson accounts her own doomed marriage in her posthumous memoir published in 1801.

“Such was my dislike to the idea of a matrimonial alliance that the only circumstance which induced me to marry was that of being still permitted to reside with my mother, and to live separated, at least for some time, from my husband.” 

As I glanced through the Halifax records I couldn’t help but wonder how many of these women suffered the same fate as Mary Robinson? Did these people really love each other? Were these simply marriages of convenience? Did some of these couples even make it to the altar?
It made me think about how lucky I am to live where and when I do. To be able to choose my own path, whether that includes marriage or not, is a freedom that young people don’t really think about too often. I think it’s mainly because we see ourselves as so far removed from our oppressive past that it doesn’t seem possible that this kind of emotional tyranny would exist today. This part of our history deserves to be remembered, however, if for no other reason than to remind us of our own cultural evolution. The preservation and study of the past is significant because, as Albert Einstein once said, “The distinction between the past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”