Rachel Wall (née Schmidt) was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, on October 1, 1760. She was 29 years old on October 8, 1789, when she was executed by hanging on the Boston Common. According to some accounts, Wall may have been America’s first female pirate; it is certain that she was the last woman to be … Continue reading In Her Own Words: The Life and Death of Rachel Wall, Massachusetts’ Female Pirate| Past is Present
Last year, the American Antiquarian Society received a grant from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation to support the reorganization, rehousing, and digitization of 655 pages of letters, notebooks, and photographs created by formerly enslaved people. The new digital resource Letters from Freedom provides additional context to the materials and to the stories of the people … Continue reading Letters from Freedom: New Digital Resource| Past is Present
As a cataloger at the American Antiquarian Society, one of my current projects involves updating bibliographic catalog records for American women of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. AAS prioritizes cataloging for marginalized groups through the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access (IDEA) initiative, and I find it rewarding to contribute to a more inclusive and diverse … Continue reading The Infinities of Women’s Experiences: Cataloging Biographies at AAS, 1844-2024| Past is Present
Publishers of amateur newspapers devoted a significant amount of their limited space to critiquing other amateur papers — sometimes constructively, but often not. Two amateur publishers from Dassel, Minnesota, Allison C. Brokaw and Reno L. Hayford, grew tired of the critical nature of amateur journalism and wanted publishers to focus their efforts on literary pursuits. … Continue reading Adventures in Amateur Newspaper Cataloging: Roasts| Past is Present
Thanks to a generous grant from the Pine Tree Foundation of New York, newly digitized Hawaiian-language materials are now available through Printing in the Hawaiian Language, a digital resource on the American Antiquarian Society website. The resource contains a digital library of 115 digitized Hawaiian materials, as well as background information on the Hawaiian collection … Continue reading Printing in the Hawaiian Language: New Digital Resource| Past is Present
Recently, I had the privilege of making a display that is now exhibited in the American Antiquarian Society reading room, as you enter through the main glass doors of Antiquarian Hall. My exhibit focuses on manumissions in 1800s America. Originally, I planned to highlight the freedom suit as a legal means of resistance to slavery. … Continue reading Exploring Manumissions in the AAS Collections: A Summer Page’s Experience| Past is Present
Has bound with it: Alfred Ely, A Sermon, Occasioned by the Late Death of Mrs. Charlotte Sprague (Hartford, 1821) and Absalom Peters, Memoir of Mrs. Charlotte E. Sprague (New Haven, 1821). Although the original leather and gilt binding has been worn down by much handling over the years, this bespoke volume provides a physical tribute … Continue reading New to AAS: William B. Sprague. The Tribute of a Mourning Husband, 1821.| Past is Present
During my residency at the American Antiquarian Society as a National Endowment for the Humanities Long-Term Fellow in the fall of 2021, the AAS acquired a letterbook from the New England Type and Stereotype Foundry. The letterbook is now transcribed and available for AAS researchers, offering much for scholars of nineteenth-century print culture, especially those … Continue reading New! Manuscript Transcription: New England Type and Stereotype Foundry Letterbook| Past is Present
Now a ghost town, Granite, Montana, was once a thriving mining town after the discovery of silver in the 1870s. The Bi-Metallic Mining Company operated there from 1887 until 1893, when the Sherman Silver Purchase Act made the price of silver so low that the mines were abandoned. This album contains numerous photographs including cyanotypes, … Continue reading New to AAS: Bi-Metallic Mining Company album. Granite, Montana, between 1887 and 1893. Photograph album with 101 photographic pri...| Past is Present
Psst, March 2nd is Dr. Seuss' birthday, as any good librarian knows, so here are Dr. Seuss birthday party ideas to celebrate reading & keep you on your toes| LIFE, CREATIVELY ORGANIZED
I trust that my peers directing libraries across the country and across the world are trying to do the right thing in an unprecedented time, with incomplete and ever-changing information and directives from above, and in a situation that we were largely not trained or educated for. I offer the following notes in support of […]| Feral Librarian
But IMO, the most important thing that libraries can do is work to ensure that the knowledge and research products we already collect, curate, and disseminate are openly available and that the scholarly record is as diverse and as inclusive as possible. Because it is the combination of truly open access to lots and lots of content – text, data, code, images – analyzed with powerful computational tools and methods where really interesting things can happen.| Feral Librarian
Dear ____ , Thank you for the kind invitation to speak at ________, but I am afraid I will have to decline. I am taking a hiatus from all external commitments, including speaking engagements, for at least a year, so that I can concentrate more fully on important work here at MIT. Given the topic, […]| Feral Librarian
Below is the modified text of my keynote talk at the 2018 Creative Commons Global Summit. Video also available. Sticking with the goal of talking about things I know, I figured I might start by tal…| Feral Librarian
