Closer Look – Digital Commonwealth News & Announcements

Hello statewide friends! This month, we have a post from one of our illustrious staff photographers. Rose Ingerman is our Digital Imaging Production Assistant, and photographs the majority of statewide materials that come into the BPL through the program. Seeing as she has seen as much of the materials that come through our doors as anyone, we thought it might be fun to ask Rose for some thoughts on her favorite materials in DigitalCommonwealth.org….

A fireplace, table, and doorway in a bedroom. — Nathaniel Hawthorne’s chamber in the famous Wayside house — which was first home to a young Louisa May Alcott! Image from the Cousins Collection at Phillips Library, PEM. See below for collection link.

Through my work photographing collections for the Boston Public Library and our statewide partners I have had the opportunity to handle a wide variety of different types of materials. From photographic prints to letters, slides, ephemera, and once even a wool cap, we get to see all kinds of objects under our cameras. I am genuinely excited for and curious about every collection that passes through our studios, but I have to admit there is a material that I get especially excited about having the opportunity to shoot: Glass plate negatives.

Negatives in general are always exciting because it isn’t always easy to discern the image when looking at the physical item. The work I do photographing the negative and inverting the image to a positive feels a little bit like magic, and it also mirrors the work that the original photographer would’ve been doing in the darkroom; Instead of placing the negative in an enlarger, exposing the paper and running it through the chemical process, I’m placing the negative on a light table, photographing it, and inverting the image using our image capture software. Even more than the interesting parallels, the thing that I love most about working with negatives is the immediacy: that film or plate was present with whatever the subject was, capturing not only an image, but a moment.

I specifically love working with glass plate negatives mainly because they are beautiful! They have a luminosity that is hard to articulate, and a collection that I think perfectly exemplifies this is the Frank Cousins Glass Plate Negative Collection from the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum. This is a collection I photographed about 6 years ago, and it’s one I still think about because of how beautiful the images are. It mostly consists of interior and exterior shots of historic buildings in Salem, though other cities and subject matter are featured as well.

I know I talked a lot about how much fun I have working with the materials themselves, but honestly the most rewarding part of my job is when other people discover and use the collections that we digitize. It’s such a privilege to be able to make archival collections from institutions all over Massachusetts more accessible through digitization and I, as always, am looking forward to seeing the new things that come our way!

For this post, we’d like to revisit a collaboration between Boston Public Library and the Digital Commonwealth Inc. nonprofit. In 2022, BPL and DC Inc. applied for and received grant funding to hire an Education Fellow, with the goal of increasing usage of DigitalCommonwealth.org resources in the classroom. Lara DeRose worked with local educators, agencies, and other stakeholders over the course of her yearlong fellowship. We spoke with Lara about her work and how primary sources in social studies can benefit kids across Massachusetts.

An 1890 photograph titled, "Encyclopedia dedication at the Stony Brook School" — This photo captures an encyclopedia dedication at the Stony Brook School… maybe we should start having classroom smartboard dedications!

Can you give us the elevator pitch for what you’ve designed? Researching Massachusetts teachers’ needs, we discovered that many of Digital Commonwealth’s resources connected to local history embedded in the elementary history and social science standards. There is also a dearth of curriculum resources for those early grade levels, as districts focus their resources on math and literacy in elementary school. In response, we built a model third grade unit that would teach students to properly research and interpret primary and secondary sources while having fun learning local history. While this work was successful, curriculum development is arduous, and not a pathway that will be successful without a dedicated team or individual responsible for developing high quality, research-based educational curricula that can be tailored to MA communities. This process must be ongoing.

The current standard for curriculum units used in MA classrooms is very high, and a partnership might be the best option[…]. While hiring an individual with proficiency in instructional design, educational technology and content creation is a possibility, this might limit the ability to perform other important outreach activities. Clear roles and responsibilities should be defined within this team or for the individual connecting them to particular “fresh” content that has been or is being added [to the repository]. Collaboration with stakeholders, such as community librarians, museums, and grade level educators, will increase [the] success and use of these materials. Continuous feedback and updates from educators will ensure that the curricula remain relevant, engaging, and effective, allowing for iterative improvements over time.

Is there anything else in the country like what you’re designing – nevermind for free?!

Since we met with DESE [Mass. Department of Elementary & Secondary Education] last summer, they have acknowledged the lack of high quality instructional materials for elementary social studies. They have recruited several curriculum development groups that are releasing a few “Investigating History” grades 3 & 4 sample lesson plans to pilot this year. I see this as an opportunity for Digital Commonwealth to “crosswalk” their resources with the release to share how teachers can use Digital Commonwealth in conjunction with Investigating History. Digital access to Investigating History is free to all Massachusetts teachers.

Does local history/localized education have much of a role in schools nowadays?

Yes, local history is part of the frameworks educators are required to teach. Learning about local history can give students context when moving on to state, national or international topics and a deeper understanding of civics. Students will not only have a better understanding of social studies themes like “change over time” but local history topics will also increase families’ appreciation of their regional history and their local government.

What have been your favorite aspects of the work to this point?

My favorite aspect of this work was exploring primary sources in Digital Commonwealth from local museums. As a former history teacher, I love collecting the individual stories that will connect students to history. This year I often fell down rabbit holes exploring photographs, artifacts, and letters. I am excited to stay connected with Digital Commonwealth, sharing and supporting opportunities for outreach.

A map titled, "A map of New-England, being the first that ever was here cut, and done by the best pattern that could be had, which being in some places defective, it made the other less exact; yet does it sufficiently shew the scituation of the country, and conveniently well the distance of places" — Here’s just one of the dozens of New England maps dated to before the 19th century you can find on DigitalCommonwealth.org!

Smith College Class of 1902 Basketball Team (C.1902), Wikimedia Commons.

More than a century ago, the first women’s collegiate basketball championship was played in Massachusetts between Smith College sophomores and freshman. “Smith March Madness 1892” is a 8:20 minute video about the game. Senda Berenson, known as the “Mother of Women’s Basketball” and Director of Physical Training at Smith, introduced the game of basketball, developed by James Naismith the year before, to her Smith students. “Major newspapers and magazines in the Northeast covered the championship game, and reporters equated the popularity of the event to the Harvard Yale men’s football game.”

Senda Berenson wrote an article entitled “Basket Ball for Women” in the September 1894 issue of Physical Education, available courtesy of Springfield College, Babson Library, Archives and Special Collections. She says, “The value of athletic sports for men is not questioned. It is a different matter, however, when we speak of athletics for women. Until very recent years, the so-called ideal woman was a small waisted, small footed, small brained damsel, who prided herself on her delicate health, who thought fainting interesting, and hysterics fascinating. Wider and more thorough knowledge has given us more wholesome and saner ideas.”

Digital Commonwealth and other archives and libraries have helped to preserve and provide access to documents, images, and audio and video files related to women in sports. One example is the audio file for a lecture given at UMass in 1978 by Wilma Rudolph, bronze medalist in 1956 Olympics and three-time gold medalist in 1960. At the time of the lecture, she had just published her autobiography, Wilma, and hearing her story in her own voice is inspirational. In the audio file, she speaks of her upbringing as the 20th of 22 children in small-town Tennessee. As a child, the fastest woman in the world had survived pneumonia, scarlet fever, and polio, and wore a leg brace for much of her early life.

The challenges that Wilma Rudolph had to overcome were many. She graciously gave credit to the family members, friends, fellow athletes, and coaches who helped her along the way. As she tells her story, she says that there came a point when she had to have faith in herself in order to reach her full potential.

Wilma Rudolph at the finish line during 50 yard dash at track meet in Madison Square Garden (1961), Wikimedia Commons.

Wilma Rudolph was a world class athelete before Title IX was signed into law. She had to make her way on her own and with the support system that she was able to construct without the benefit of the law enshrining women’s rights.

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (“Title IX”), signed into law on June 23, 1972, was designed to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs and activities in all public and private elementary and secondary schools, school districts, colleges, and universities receiving any Federal funds .Title IX has broader implications than just creating a level playing field for women athletes. But in the years since the law was passed, untold opportunities have opened up for women in sports.

Women’s Sport Foundation, “Chasing Equity: The Triumphs, Challenges, and Opportunities in Sports for Girls and Women” (2020), p 13.

The implementation of Title IX has had a rocky road. It was not clear in the original law exactly how educational institutions would balance spending for men’s and women’s athletic programs. Universities with men’s football and men’s basketball programs that were spending and generating vast sums of money felt threatened by the law. Digital Commonwealth provides a link to a 1979 MacNeil/Lehrer Report on Title IX Women’s Sports. In his introduction to the half hour video file, Robert MacNeil says “many people wonder whether glamorous, big-time, big-money college sports are threatened by the drive to give women an equal share in college athletics. Tonight, sex discrimination in sports, and the debate over a law called Title IX.”

Progress has not been easy. Digital Commonwealth and its member institutions will continue to provide access to documentation of the uphill battle for equity in sports for girls and women.

Barbara Schneider, Member Outreach and Education Committee

Digital Commonwealth News & Announcements

Category Archives: Closer Look

Guest Post: BPL Photographer Rose’s Favorite Format!

A Conversation with BPL & Digital Commonwealth Education Fellow Lara DeRose

Celebrating Women’s Sports on the 50th Anniversary of Title IX