Digital Collections Highlighted
The MHS was among several Boston-area repositories featured in Sam Allis' Saturday Boston Globe article "Historic collections meet the 21st century." Allis highlights HIstoric New England's new online collections database, and also reports on digitization efforts at the Boston Public Library, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Boston Athenaeum.
Among our digital projects mentioned by Allis are our presentations of Thomas Jefferson's manuscript of "Notes on the State of Virginia" (you can also view Jefferson's book catalogues, farm and garden books, a copy of the Declaration of Independence in his hand, and many of his architectural drawings on our Thomas Jefferson Papers website) and our forthcoming digital collection of materials relating to the Siege of Boston during the Revolutionary War.
For the Adams Family Papers (which amount to some 300,000 manuscript pages in all) we host several different types of digital collection. The diaries and autobiography of John Adams, plus the correspondence between John and Abigail Adams (nearly 1,200 letters) are available in digital facsimile with transcriptions through the Adams Family Papers Electronic Archive. The diaries of John Quincy Adams (some 14,000 pages) are presented in digital facsimile, searchable or browsable by date (and JQA's line-a-day diaries are currently being broadcast via Twitter, after which the transcriptions are added to the digital facsimile pages). And thirty-two volumes of the published Adams Papers are freely available as annotated transcriptions as part of the Adams Papers Digital Editions.
But our digital collections go far beyond the Adamses and Jefferson. You can browse the full list of our digital offerings here, but among the collections launched (fairly) recently are our Coming of the Revolution site, which features an interactive timeline of documents covering the period 1764-1776; African Americans and the End of Slavery in Massachusetts, a collection of 117 manuscript and printed documents from our collections including letters and poems by Phillis Wheatley and our (unique) copy of Samuel Sewall's anti-slavery pamphlet The Selling of Joseph. If maps are more your style, check out Massachusetts Maps, a selection of 104 maps (mostly unique manuscripts) from our collections. Or there's the ever-popular MHS Highlights Gallery, where you can see many of the most popular and striking visual items housed at the Society.
We hope you enjoy our digital collections, and always welcome feedback about them. Just email beehive@masshist.org, and I'll pass them along.
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| Published: Monday, 23 August, 2010, 8:52 AM
Bentley Receives ANA Presidential Award
Anne Bentley, our Curator of Art, was presented with a Presidential Award by the American Numismatic Association, meeting in Boston this week.
The plaque below the medal (pictured at left) reads: "Thank you for your outstanding contributions to our hobby community."
With John W. Adams, Anne is the curator of our current exhibit, "Precious Metals: From Au to Zn," which you can view Monday-Saturday, 1-4 p.m. here at the Society through 2 October.
Anne was feeling far too modest this morning to comment on her award, but she said "Come see the show. We've got some great items on display, and you'll have a chance to learn some interesting things about your history."
We're so proud of you, Anne - congratulations on this well-deserved honor!
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| Published: Friday, 13 August, 2010, 9:20 AM
It's Pronounced HOW?
MHS Librarian Peter Drummey put his Boston pronunciation skills on the line in a recent column by Billy Palumbo over the "right" way to say "Tremont" (as in the name of the street). It's an amusing look at some of Boston's linguistic shibboleths, what they mean, and what they say about us.
Tremont is one of the more interesting Boston words, but there are so many others to choose from. My personal favorite is Faneuil, which I think I've heard said at least ten different ways.
Do you have a favorite Boston pronunciation? Or is there one that just drives you up the wall whenever you hear it? Is there one so egregiously wrong that you would stop someone on the street and correct them? Feel free to chime in in the Comments section!
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| Published: Tuesday, 20 July, 2010, 9:36 AM
Ulrich on Preservation
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, professor of history at Harvard and the most recent recipient of the MHS' John F. Kennedy Medal, mentioned the Historical Society in a recent lecture about the importance of preserving historical artifacts, delivered at the Church History Museum in Salt Lake City. You can read an account of Ulrich's talk here, via the Deseret News.
One quote that I particularly like: "History is not what happened, it is an account of the past, based on surviving sources. If there are no sources, there is no history."
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| Published: Tuesday, 15 June, 2010, 12:00 PM
Holton Wins Bancroft for "Abigail Adams"
We're thrilled and excited here at MHS today to report that our friend Woody Holton has been awarded one of the three 2010 Bancroft Prizes for his book Abigail Adams. One of the most prestigious prizes for books of history, the Bancroft is awarded by the trustees of Columbia University "to the authors of books of exceptional merit in the fields of American history, biography, and diplomacy."
Congratulations, Woody, on this well-deserved honor!
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| Published: Thursday, 18 March, 2010, 11:24 AM
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