By Jeremy Dibbell

We’ve launched a new web gallery to show off some of the many highlights from the MHS collections. Check it out by clicking on the image or visiting
http://www.masshist.org/online/gallery/. You can also browse by category here. Our digital projects team will continue to add to this gallery, so expect periodic additions to the collection.

By Jeremy Dibbell

Continuing with the departmental introductions (first installment here), let’s meet the Collections Services team! These are the good people who not only coordinate the acquisition of new materials, but also perform the wide range of tasks which make our collections of manuscripts, photographs and printed books available for researchers to use. They process the manuscript collections and write the guides (as well as put them online), maintain our online catalog (ABIGAIL), create and manage our digital collections, and make sure all components of our website are running smoothly. Members of this department also ensure that our collections are being stored properly, and carry out repairs when necessary.

Collections Services staff members include:

Brenda Lawson, Director of Collections Services
Mary Fabiszewski, Senior Cataloger
Laura Lowell, Manuscript Processor
Susan Martin, Manuscript Processor and EAD Coordinator
Nancy Heywood, Digital Projects Coordinator
Laura Wulf & Peter Steinberg, Digital Projects Production Specialists
Kathy Griffin, Nora Saltonstall Preservation Librarian
Oona Beauchard, Conservation Technician
Bill Beck, Web Development Specialist

Like Reader Services, Collections Services hosts one or two interns per semester, from Simmons College and other Boston-area institutions.

Complete contact information is available here.

By Jeremy Dibbell

The MHS awards a wide variety of research fellowships each year. Those for the 2009-2010 season were recently announced. Please pardon the lengthy list (impressive, isn’t it?). For more information about each type of fellowship, click the link in the heading.

MHS-NEH Long-Term Research Fellowships:

– Crystal Feimster, Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of North Carolina, Sexual Warfare: Rape and the American Civil War (four-month award)

– Linford Fisher, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Brown University, The Indian Great Awakening: Religion and the Shaping of Native Cultures in Early America (ten-month award; deferred to 2010-2011)

– April Haynes, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Massachusetts Historical Society and American Antiquarian Society, Riotous Flesh: Gender, Physiology, and the Solitary Vice, 1830-1860 (four-month award)

MHS Short-Term Research Fellowships:

– Karen Woods Weierman, Associate Professor, Department of English, Worcester State College, The Case of the Slave-Child, Med: The Geography of Freedom in Antebellum Boston (African American Studies Fellow)

– Mazie Harris, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, Brown University, “To Feast Our Bodily Eyes”: Nineteenth-Century American Portrait Vignettes and Card Albums (Andrew Oliver Research Fellow)

– Carol Bundy, Independent Scholar, McClellan’s Visit to Boston, January 28-February 8, 1863 (Andrew W. Mellon Fellow)

– Jan Cigliano, Independent Scholar, John Hay: Genius of Diplomacy (1838-1905) (Andrew W. Mellon Fellow)

– Lindsay DiCuirci, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of English, The Ohio State University, History’s Imprint: The Colonial Book and the Writing of American History in the Nineteenth Century (Andrew W. Mellon Fellow)

– Jim Downs, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Connecticut College, Sick from Freedom: The Unexpected Consequences of the American Civil War (Andrew W. Mellon Fellow)

– Caroline Frank, Visiting Lecturer, Department of American Civilization, Brown University, Native American Enslavement in Southern New England, 1630-1730 (Andrew W. Mellon Fellow)

– Elizabeth Kelly Gray, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Towson University, Worlds of Pain: Opium and Early America (Andrew W. Mellon Fellow)

– Matt Hudock, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, University of Delaware, African American Colonization and Identity (Andrew W. Mellon Fellow)

– Whitney Martinko, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, University of Virginia, Progress through Preservation: History on the American Landscape in an Age of Improvement, 1790-1860 (Andrew W. Mellon Fellow)

– Rachel Shapiro, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, University of Virginia, Washington Brotherhood: Friendship and Politics in the Civil War Era (Andrew W. Mellon Fellow)

– Lori Veilleux, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Religious Studies, Brown University, Religion, Science, and Boston’s 1832 Cholera Epidemic (Benjamin F. Stevens Fellow)

– Alea Henle, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, University of Connecticut, Preserving the Past, Making History: Historical Societies, Editors, and Collectors in the Early Republic (Malcolm and Mildred Freiberg Fellow)

– Matthew Hale, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Goucher College, The French Revolution and American National Identity (Marc Friedlaender Fellow)

– Jeffrey Kosiorek, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of History, Hendrix College, The Power of Our Patriot Fathers: Memory, Commemoration, and the American Revolution in the Nineteenth Century (Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati Fellow)

– Sara Lampert, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, University of Michigan, The Public Woman: Taking the Stage in Nineteenth-Century America (Ruth R. and Alyson R. Miller Fellow)

– Deborah McNally, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, University of Washington, Within Patriarchy: Puritan Women in Massachusetts’s Congregational Churches, 1630-1715 (Ruth R. and Alyson R. Miller Fellow)

– Derek Attig, Ph.D. Student, Department of History, University of Illinois, Race, Religion, and the Idea of America in Twentieth-Century Bookmobility (Twentieth Century History Fellow)

– Justin Pope, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, The George Washington University, Whispers and Waves: Insurrection, Conspiracy, and the Search for Salvation in the British Atlantic, 1729-1742 (W.B.H. Dowse Fellow)

– Richard Rath, Associate Professor of History, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, The Disenchantment of America: Mediating the Senses in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (W.B.H. Dowse Fellow)

Suzanne and Caleb Loring Research Fellowship (with the Boston Athenaeum):

– Kathryn Shively Meier, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of HIstory, University of Virginia, “Under the Siege of the Blue”: Environmental Effects on Civil War Mental and Physical Health in Virginia, 1862

New England Regional Fellowship Consortium (NERFC) Awards (with 16 other institutions)*

– Elizabeth Blackmar, Professor, Department of History, Columbia University, Land, Capital, and the Ethos of Preserving Family Property

– Michael Block, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, University of Southern California, New England Merchants, the China Trade, and the Origins of California

– Eileen Botting, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Notre Dame, Reclaiming a Lost Text of Early American History and Political Thought: Hannah Mather Crocker’s “Reminiscences and Traditions of Boston” (Colonial Society of Massachusetts Fellow)

– Sean Harvey, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, College of William and Mary, American Languages: Indians, Ethnology, and the Empire for Liberty

– Alea Henle, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, University of Connecticut, Preserving the Past, Making History: Historical Societies, Editors & Collectors in the Early Republic

– Whitney Martinko, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, University of Virginia, Progress through Preservation: History on the American Landscape in an Age of Improvement, 1790-1860

– Amber Moulton-Wiseman, Ph.D. Candidate in African and African-American Studies, Harvard University, Marriage Extraordinary: Interracial Marriage and the Politics of Family in Antebellum Massachusetts (Bostonian Society/New England Women’s Club Fellow)

– Alan Rogers, Professor, Department of History, Boston College, Smallpox and Skeptics: The Battle Over Compulsory Vaccination in Massachusetts

– D. Jamez Terry, B.A. Candidate, Department of History, University of Maine at Farmington, Cultural Constructions of Charles Guiteau

– John Wong, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, Harvard University, Global Positioning: China Trade and the Hong Merchants of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

– Helen York, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, University of Maine at Orono, Sound and Silence: Enfranchised and Disenfranchised Radio in New England

* Note: not all of the NERFC fellows will be researching at MHS as part of their NERFC award.

Teacher Fellowships:

– Richard Gallagher, Hartford Memorial Middle School, White River Junction, VT (Adams Fellow)

– Adam Zilcoski, W. L. Chenery Middle School, Belmont, MA (Adams Fellow)

– Danielle Fernandex, North Quincy High School, Quincy, MA (Swensrud Fellow)

– Sean Irwin, Boston College High School, Boston, MA (Swensrud Fellow)

– Edward Davey, Jonas Clarke Middle School, Lexington, MA (Kass Fellow)

– Charles Newhall, St. John’s Preparatory School, Danvers, MA (Kass Fellow)

By Jeremy Dibbell

I’m very pleased to report that the Proceedings of the Massaschusetts Historical Society (1791-1997) and the Massachusetts Historical Review (1999- ) are now available digitally through the subscription database JSTOR. Most universities and large public libraries (including the Boston Public Library) offer access to JSTOR content, which means our publications are now much more widely accessible to scholars and researchers around the world.

The search capability provided by JSTOR is a real treat – just yesterday I was looking for something in the Proceedings and rather than browsing through several different index volumes, I just ran a full-text search across all the volumes and had the answer in no time.

Note: Many volumes of the Proceedings are also freely available via Google Books, but not in a systematic way.

By Jeremy Dibbell

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting occasional pieces designed to introduce the various departments responsible for the wide range of activities that go on at 1154 Boylston Street. I thought it only fair to begin with my own department, since we in Reader Services are the folks you’re most likely to see when you come in to use the library. We’re the ones who staff the reception desk, the reading room and the reference desk, and who answer your reference questions by email, phone, or letter (yes, we still get a few). We’re responsible for retrieving and returning the materials our readers ask to see every day, and for enforcing the library’s policies and procedures. Reader Services staff also manage rights and reproduction requests submitted by authors, filmmakers and others who wish to cite material or use an image from our collections; coordinate incoming and outgoing loans; and curate the Society’s public exhibits.

Reader Services staff members include:

Peter Drummey, Stephen T. Riley Librarian
Anne Bentley, Curator of Art
Elaine Grublin, Reference Librarian
Tracy Potter & Jeremy Dibbell, Assistant Reference Librarians
Heather Merrill, Sara Georgini, Caitlin Corless, Anna Cook, & Rakashi Chand, Library Assistants

We also are frequently joined by an intern or two from the archives program at Simmons College. Our most recent, Jocelyn Gould and Daniel Hinchen, have just finished their semester with us.

If you have a general question for our department, or if you need to reach any one of us, you can find our complete contact information here.