On September 11 2001, about 400 students and staff gathered at Tufts’ Hillel to grieve, to spend the day together, or to talk about possible actions in the face of the attacks. Within a couple of hours students decided to create a Patches for Peace Quilt to provide a creative outlet and set a message of hope, peace and community. Hillel provided logistical and infrastructure support, and members of the Hillel student board approached many of the approximately 160 student organizations and groups for their participation in the project. Eventually 88 student organizations — ranging from the Association of Latin American Students to the Arab Student Association, from the Chamber Singers to the Inter Greek Council, and from the No Homers Club to the Women’s Soccer Team — each produced a patch.

See the quilt at the online Patches for Peace quilt exhibit, or see the actual quilt on temporary display at the Tufts Campus Center from September 11 to October 11, 2011.

It was my privilege to attend SHEAR (Society for the Historians of the Early American Republic) last month in Philadelphia.  I gave a short presentation on the New Nation Votes project in conjunction with two papers that have made good use of our data.

The first was from David Houpt, a graduate student at the Graduate Center at City University New York.  His paper, “Critical Masses: Celebratory Politics and Political Mobilization in the Congressional Election of 1794″ discussed the rather surprising win of a Republican candidate in, what until then, had been the Federalist stronghold of Philadelphia.  His paper made use of these election results, with special detail on the ward level results.

The other paper was from Daniel Peart.  Entitled “An ‘Era of No Feelings’? Rethinking the Periodization of Early U.S. Politics”, it made use of a variety of elections throughout the Era of Good Feelings (1815 – 1824), measuring voter turnout in all of the existing states and refuting the notion that voter turnout declined as the Republican party gained a stronghold and Federalist competition declined, instead showing that the areas with the highest turnout were the areas with the least amount of Federalist competition.  Daniel recently completed his PhD at University College London and will start this month as a lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London.  He was inspired to pursue this idea when he heard a presentation at the 14th Annual Conference of The Association of British American 19th Century Historians given by Phil and the previous coordinator, Krista Ferrante.

I added a bit of context about the site and showed off one particularly interesting election – the 1824 North Carolina Presidential Election which contravenes the long-held notion that Andrew Jackson was the clear winner of the 1824 election.

Overall, it was a great opportunity to connect with the scholars who are making use of this project and to get some valuable feedback as well.  One result: a new feature on the home page that notes what the most recently updated data is.

This week we are taking a step back from highlighting our collections to highlight our local professional organization: New England Archivists (NEA). NEA is hosting their spring conference this weekend at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. The program committee for this conference was chaired by none other than our own Eliot Wilczek, University Records Manager, and Jennifer Phillips, former Archivist for Digital Collections, served on the program committee before she left for Colorado last January. Other DCA staff will be taking part in the program as well: Director and University Archivist, Anne Sauer, will be taking part in a session on cloud computing, and Veronica Martzahl, Records Archivist, will be part of a session on coordinated disaster preparedness programs. Even our student assistants from Simmons College will be taking part. Derek Mosley and Stacie Williams are presenting a poster called “Foot in the Door: A guide to maximizing student internships” and Molly Bruce will be helping out with registration.

FYI: For anyone attending the conference and hoping to tweet about it, the hashtag is #nea11sp.

On November 11, we honor military veterans by observing Veteran’s Day. People serving in the armed forces have been an important presence at Tufts throughout its history, and the DCA is host to numerous collections that document that presence.

In 1942, Tufts was one of eight universities granted a Naval ROTC unit, which allowed students to complete their college studies and receive military training prior to being commissioned in the navy. The Tufts Digital Library has numerous images of the NROTC from the NROTC/V-12 collection of memorabilia. DCA also has a collection of artifacts from the Tufts War Museum, which includes items such as medallions, coins, and shrapnel taken from soldiers’ bodies! Other collections relevant to the history of veterans include the School for War Veterans records, World War II posters and publications, the Melville Munro collection’s series on Tufts and the War and the War Years at Tufts, and the Atomic Veterans collection, which recognizes members of the United States Armed Forces and citizens who were exposed to ionizing radiation from atomic and nuclear weapons testing.

Tomorrow, Tufts honors veterans and those currently serving in the armed forces in ceremonies on Memorial Steps and in Ballou Hall.

It’s summer, but there is still a lot going on at here DCA!

On June 9, 2010, Eliot Wilczek, University Records Manager, received a “Change Agent” Award at the Tufts Distinction Awards ceremony in Cohen Auditorium. The ceremony and reception were a lot of fun for DCA, and for all the coworkers of those who received this year’s Distinction Awards.

On Tuesday July 20, 2010, DCA and UIT Academic Technology will present a one-day regional Fedora conference. Thornton Staples of DuraSpace will give an overview of DuraSpace, Fedora, and DuraCloud, and Mark Leggott of the University of Prince Edward Island will talk about Islandora, a Fedora and Drupal-based tool. There will also be ample opportunity for Fedora users to share their projects and concerns. Register for this FREE conference online at http://tuftsfedora.eventbrite.com/.

DCA has been participating in Tufts University Libraries’ professional developmental efforts. To that end, Susanne Belovari, Archivist for Reference and Collections, invited the Discovery Platforms Library Team to DCA and showed them a sampling of the diverse materials stored in the Archives. She spoke about the differences between library cataloging and archival arrangement and description, and between how library and archival materials are discovered.

On Wednesday August 18, 2010, DCA will give a presentation to librarians about Fedora Commons. Fedora Commons is a digital object repository administered by Academic Technology and used by DCA. The presentation will be technical in focus and will cover:

• Fedora Commons system architecture (data objects, datastreams,
  metadata, content models, disseminators)
• indexing, discovery, and delivery applications built on top of Fedora Commons
• workflow for creating and ingesting digital objects into Fedora Commons

Yesterday, April 14th, 2010, Anne Sauer, Director of the Digital Collections and Archives, gave a talk on the founding of Tufts and on the early decades of Tufts College in Medford. Her talk was sponsored by the Medford Historical Society, and there was an historic walking tour of the campus that preceded the talk.

Anne’s talk featured a slideshow of images from the Tufts Digital Library. Click on the image below to view a sample slideshow of historical images.

Tufts University Digital Collections & Archives and UIT Academic Technology present a one-day regional Fedora conference.

July 20, 2010
9 AM-5 PM

In a tough economy, it’s especially important to make sure we stay in touch with our local colleagues in the Fedora Commons community. This day-long conference in Massachusetts will give us an opportunity to hear from other Northeast Fedora users. More importantly, it will give us an opportunity to talk to each other and swap ideas and thoughts about the way we use Fedora Commons.

Thornton Staples of DuraSpace will be present to give an overview of DuraSpace, Fedora, and DuraCloud.

Register online at http://tuftsfedora.eventbrite.com/. For more information, contact us via that site or in the comments to this entry.

The schedule for the day is still evolving, and there may be time for additional presentations. If you have interest in giving a short presentation or demonstration, please contact us by May 1. If you are interested in facilitating a Birds of a Feather session, please contact us by May 1.

Registration is free and includes talks, breakout sessions, and morning and afternoon refreshments. Lunch is not included. The conference will be held in the heart of Boston’s Chinatown, walking distance to many excellent restaurants. Conference registrants will receive updates as the program takes shape.

This week, the Tufts Libraries hosted a disaster recovery workshop with Gregor Trinkaus-Randall of the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners. It sounds boring, but trust me, sometimes workshops are like playing with crafts in kindergarten. We hosed down piles of old books, records, and newspapers, and then did our best to rescue the (very valuable, of course!) damp materials. There’s nothing like destruction in a good cause.

Check out our gallery of photos from the event to see librarians and archivists having fun with water and electricity. Here’s a teaser:

Read more…

Come meet staff from the Digital Collection and Archives and Academic Technology TODAY, September 17th, at the Tufts Technology Fair. The Tufts Technology Fair takes place on the Tisch Library Patio from 11am to 1:30pm, and features representatives from various Tufts IT organizations. DCA and AT staff who work on the Tufts Digital Library will be there to explain and promote this great resource for finding historical photos of Tufts, student scholarship, student publications and more… You can also learn about other technology resources available at Tufts for all students, staff and faculty. We hope to see you there!

You’re invited to the Fourth Annual Edward R. Murrow Forum on Issues in Journalism

Topic:

Digging Too Deeply? Headlines, Politics, and Public Service

Tufts University

April 13, 2009
12 pm to 1:15 pm
Barnum Hall – Room 008

Panelists:

Chris Matthews

Host, MSNBC’s Hardball

Michael Dukakis

Democratic Presidential candidate in 1988 and former Massachusetts Governor

Janet Wu

Political Reporter, WCVB-TV Boston

Jointly sponsored by the Communications and Media Studies Program, the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, and the Edward R. Murrow Center at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy

Reception to follow in the Rabb Room, Lincoln-Filene Hall

Image available on the Tufts Digital Library