Boston Immigrants: Bringing Four Centuries of Tradition and Innovation to The City Upon a Hill

The Library invites you to view the newest exhibit, Boston Immigrants: Bringing Four Centuries of Tradition and Innovation to The City Upon a Hill. This exhibit shows materials from the State Library of Massachusetts’ collections highlighting the history of Boston’s immigrants and their contributions to the Commonwealth.

The exhibit runs through May 25, 2012 and can be viewed outside of the Library, Room 341 of the State House. Library hours are Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm.

Photo credit: North American Civic League for Immigrants Annual Report 1912-1913.

Massachusetts Women in Politics Now on Flickr

During the winter of 2010, the State Library displayed an exhibit on women in politics in Massachusetts. The exhibit profiled sixteen women politicians who have worked in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in such roles as Mayor, Representative, Senator, and Lieutenant Governor. The exhibit is now available for viewing on the State Library's Flickr site.

If you are interested in learning more about the women who have served in the Massachusetts Legislature, the State Library holds the legislative papers of fifteen women legislators, occupying approximately 200 linear feet. These materials are located in the Special Collections Department in Room 55 of the Massachusetts State House, open 9am-5pm Monday through Friday.

The Massachusetts Women in Politics exhibit was co-presented by the State Library of Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Caucus of Women Legislators during their 75th Anniversary year. Thanks to Bruce DiLoreto and Mark Kasianowicz for many of the photos and to Marietta Carr for her research.

- The Marketing Committee

One Large Exhibit, Two Small Cases

With a dazzling array of binding colors, lettering styles, and subjects, the seven-case exhibit Decorated Publishers' Bindings 1840 to 1930: Collections from the State Library of Massachusetts was extraordinarily popular, but had to come down eventually to make way for the new exhibit, Worcester: Heart of the Commonwealth. Although the full bindings exhibit is still available digitally on the Library's Flickr site, the library wanted to continue to display a selection from this exhibit on a much smaller scale. The question was, how?

This is where I came in! As a preservation intern beginning in September, my first assignment was to help the Preservation Librarian, Lacy Stoneburner, take down the full exhibit and design a much smaller one using the same materials. First, I looked at the approximately eighty books from the original exhibit, knowing that I had to pare these down to about ten. I also realized that the large text panels that "told the story" were too large to keep with the books and fit in the smaller cases. So, what essence of the original exhibit could I retain?

While the two small display cases did not have enough room for one volume from each decade from 1840 through 1930, I wanted to maintain a wide range of publication dates, and to include one 1938 paper-covered book representing the end of the era of decorative publishers' bindings. I chose covers in cloth and wood veneer, in red, black, green, blue, and yellow, and many with eye-catching gilt lettering. Finally, I wanted the volumes to represent the wide variety of the books' subject matter, which included almanacs, histories of places or battles, and educational books covering topics from steam to nature studies.

How did I do? Come visit the two exhibit cases just inside the entrance to the State Library, Room 341 of the State House, and you can decide!

Posters of the original exhibit are available for $8 in both the library administration office (Room 341) and in the Special Collections department (Room 55). Shipping options are also available. Please let us know if you have any questions by calling (617) 727-2595.

-Colleen McGhee-French, Preservation Intern

African Americans in the Massachusetts Legislature Exhibit Now on Flickr

In the winter of 2009 the State Library displayed an exhibit called "African Americans in the Massachusetts Legislature." This exhibit is now available to view online as a set of images on the State Library's Flickr site.

The exhibit documented the lives and contributions of noteworthy people who have served the General Court of the Commonwealth and changed Massachusetts history. Legislators highlighted include Lewis Hayden, Royal Bolling, Sr., Royal Bolling, Jr., Bill Owens, Shirley Owens-Hicks and Mel King, among others.

Please visit the State Library (State House - Room 341) Monday through Friday, 9am to 5 pm to view the library's current exhibit, "Worcester: Heart of the Commonwealth," open though January 27, 2012.

- The Marketing Committee

Worcester: Heart of the Commonwealth

You are invited to visit the library's newest exhibit, Worcester: Heart of the Commonwealth.

In this exhibition, materials from the State Library of Massachusetts' collections highlight the history of Worcester and its contributions to Massachusetts and America.

The exhibit runs through January 27, 2012 and can be viewed outside of the library, room 341 of the State House. Can't make it to the library? View the digital exhibit on the library's Flickr site!

Image adapted from Birdseye View of Main Street, circa 1900.

Decorated Bindings Exhibit Extended

Due to popular demand, the Decorated Publishers' Bindings exhibit has been extended. The exhibit will remain open through Tuesday, September 20th.

Love the exhibit? Take home a memento! Posters are available for $8 in both the library administration office (room 341) and in the Special Collections department (room 55). Shipping options are also available.

Decorated Publishers’ Bindings 1840 to 1930: Collections from the State Library of Massachusetts

The library is pleased to announce the opening of its new exhibit Decorated Publishers’ Bindings 1840 to 1930: Collections from the State Library of Massachusetts, on display June 27 through September 9, 2011 outside of the State Library, Room 341 of the State House.

Books were once the luxury of the wealthy, bound by hand in leather or silk to suit the individual. As the literate public and its appetite for books increased, publishers began to take on the task of binding, greatly reducing the need for independent bookbinders. The Industrial Revolution brought about several technological advances that turned the craft of hand bookbinding into a process that could produce books en masse. The invention of mechanical presses enabled the cloth bindings to be imprinted, stamped and gilded to resemble the fine bindings traditionally produced by hand.

Publishers’ bindings enjoyed popularity from 1830 to the end of the 1930s when they were replaced by decorative dust jackets. This exhibit explores the artistic development of publishers’ bindings, their styles and reflections upon the events of the time, with over seventy-five examples from the State Library of Massachusetts.

A digital version of the exhibit is available on the Library’s Flickr site. Click here to view the online exhibit.

For more information on the exhibition please contact the State Library’s Special Collections Department: special.collections@state.ma.us.

Special thanks to Ann-Katreen Hollon, Marissa Sorek, Krista Barresi, Kate Boutin, April Pierce and Angela White for their work on this exhibit.

- Lacy Stoneburner, Preservation Librarian

Exhibit Preview

The library's summer exhibit opens June 27th and I am happy to give you a sneak peek into the exhibit. Decorated Publishers' Bindings 1840 to 1930: Collections from the State Library of Massachusetts is an exhibition exploring the artistic development of publishers' bindings, their styles and reflections upon the events of the time, with examples from our collections.

At left is one example from the exhibit, which will include over sixty books spanning ninety years of publishing history. The subjects of the books vary widely, including Boston and New England history, the arts, farming, industry, society and travel writing.

Can't wait for the exhibit to open? Check out the library's Flickr set of Decorated Bindings. This set has grown over time, but only six of the books were chosen to be included in the exhibit. Additional images from the summer exhibit will be added to the Flickr set after the exhibit opening. Can you guess which six made the cut?

Image: Adams, John Coleman. Nature Studies in Berkshire. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1899.

- Lacy Stoneburner, Preservation Librarian

Celebrate Women's History Month with New Images in Flickr

March is Women's History Month and the State Library is happy to present a new set of images on our Flickr site that celebrates five women politicians from Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Cambridge Women In Politics set digitally recreates an exhibit installed at Cambridge City Hall in the Fall of 2009. The exhibit profiles three former mayors, E. Denise Simmons, Barbara Ackermann and Sheila Russell, and two current Massachusetts legislators, Martha Walz and Alice Wolf. The original exhibit was presented in collaboration with the Office of Mayor E. Denise Simmons and the Massachusetts Caucus of Women Legislators.

- The Marketing Committee

Image courtesy of E. Denise Simmons.

Holyoke Materials Now on Flickr

In the fall of 2009 the State Library displayed an exhibit called "Holyoke, Queen of Industrial Cities." This exhibit, a joint project by the State Library of Massachusetts and the Holyoke Public Library, is now available to view online as a set of images on the State Library’s Flickr site.

The exhibit highlighted the items in both libraries' collections that document the impact of the Industrial Revolution on the city of Holyoke, Massachusetts. Included in the exhibit were books, maps, and photographs of Holyoke, which was one of the first planned industrial towns in the country. Most of the photographs in the exhibit were from the Holyoke Public Library’s Milan P. Warner Collection. Warner, a Holyoke photographer in the 1880s and 1890s, captured beautiful black and white images of the town during its first industrial boom.

Please visit the State Library Monday through Friday, 9am to 5pm, to view the library’s current exhibit, “Congressional Redistricting through the Years.”

-The Marketing Committee

New Exhibit Now on Display

Please visit the State Library to view the newest exhibit, Congressional Redistricting Through the Years. This exhibit highlights the changes in U.S. Congressional districts in response to population growth. Maps included in the exhibit range in date from 1842 to 2002. The exhibit can be viewed outside of the library, room 341 of the State House, Monday through Friday, 9 am to 5 pm.

Pictorial Maps Now on Flickr

In the summer of 2009 the State Library presented the exhibit, Ernest Dudley Chase: A Worldview in Maps highlighting original, decorative maps created and published in the 1930s and 1940s by Ernest Dudley Chase, a graphic artist from Winchester, Mass. Select images from this exhibit are now available on the library’s Flickr website.

Born in Lowell, Ernest Dudley Chase (1878-1966) worked for Rust Craft Publishers, which printed greeting cards at its plant in Dedham. Chase was the acknowledged expert in the greeting card business in the United States with publication of his book The Romance of Greeting Cards (1926), the first complete history of the greeting card industry. Chase’s maps were an extension of his work as a graphic artist for Rust Craft and also reflected an international trend toward pictorial mapmaking. These decorative maps, which experienced a resurgence in public popularity after 1913, are a genre in which the cartography is animated with illustrations of buildings, people, and animals. Often including historical references, the maps also frequently depicted airplanes and other modes of transportation. Borrowing from typical Renaissance cartography, Chase and other pictorial mapmakers used embellishments like compass roses, ornate cartouches, and decorative borders.

Chase’s maps revel in a colorful, idiosyncratic, and whimsical view of the world. The exhibit of his original cartographic creations showcased maps of Boston, Massachusetts, New England, the United States, and the world.

Due to copyright restrictions, only vignettes from select maps are included in this set. Please visit the Special Collections department to view any of the twenty nine Chase maps in the library's collection.

- The Marketing Committee

Above image adapted from: Historic Massachusetts: a travel map to help you feel at home in the Bay State, 1964.

Plymouth Materials Now on Flickr

In the fall of 2008 the State Library of Massachusetts displayed an exhibit on one of the most famous towns in the Commonwealth: Plymouth. Titled “Plymouth: People, Politics, and Primary Sources,” the exhibit highlighted the library’s wealth of resources about this town, including William Bradford’s manuscript “Of Plimoth Plantation,” which was written between 1630 and 1650. Also exhibited were items such as historic maps, tax valuations, town reports, photographs, legislative documents, historic newspapers, directories, and the personal papers of a state legislator who represented Plymouth.

The exhibit may now be viewed online as a set of images on the State Library’s Flickr page. This photo set digitally recreates the 2008 exhibit, including the original information panels as well as digital images of the primary sources displayed in the exhibit.

Please visit the library Monday through Friday, 9am to 5pm, to view the library’s current exhibit, “Butterflies of North America and Britain.”

-The Marketing Committee

Wild Flowers on Flickr

The library is pleased to present a new set of images on Flickr: North American Wild Flowers.

The set digitally recreates an exhibition of selected plates of watercolors by the American botanist Mary Vaux Walcott. The Smithsonian Institution published these paintings in limited and library five-volume editions as North American Wild Flowers in 1925.

The exhibit was originally posted at the State Library during the summer of 2008. Several of the original exhibit pieces are on display on the Periodicals Balcony, room 442. The original prints can be viewed in the Special Collections Department, room 55.

- The Marketing Committee

Massachusetts Women in Politics Exhibit, Now Open

The Library is excited to present our new exhibit, “Women in Massachusetts Politics.” The exhibit highlights important women in the state’s political history and their accomplishments. Included is a timeline showing important events and people, and a display on the Massachusetts Caucus of Women Legislators, celebrating their 35th anniversary.

The exhibit brings to light women such as Sybil Holmes, the first female state senator. While working at a law firm, Holmes studied law privately and passed the bar in 1910 at age 21. She later studied at both Harvard and Columbia law schools. Holmes served as an assistant attorney general for four years before being elected to the General Court in 1936.

Other women in the exhibit include Susan Fitzgerald and Sylvia Donaldson, who were the first women elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. They were elected in 1923, just three years after the 19th Amendment was passed. Susan Fitzgerald studied political science and history at Bryn Mawr, where her three daughters later studied. She was a strong advocate for women’s suffrage and served in many different organizations to attain the right to vote. Fitzgerald wrote essays to promote equal rights for women, such as "Women in the Home," 1908, "What is a Democracy?" 1910, and "Have We a Democracy?" 1913.

Outside of the state legislature, women made important strides in local government. Alice Burke was elected mayor of Westfield in 1939, becoming the first female mayor not just in Massachusetts, but in all of New England as well. She beat the incumbent by just 127 votes and went on to serve for three more terms. Burke would become known as the Grand Dame of Westfield for her active role and many contributions to the community.

The exhibit shows how far women have come in Massachusetts politics, but also how far there is to go. In 1971, there were only four women in the legislature, out of a total of 300 seats (1.3%). In 2010, there are 52 women, out of a total of 200 seats (26%). The first female senate president, Therese Murray, was only elected in March 2007; and no woman has been elected as speaker of the House. The sole exception is Sylvia Donaldson, who was declared honorary speaker for one day, February 18, 1926. Massachusetts has yet to send a woman to the U.S. Senate; and of the twelve legislators representing the state in Washington, D.C., only one is a woman (Niki Tsongas, 5th District). As women comprise 52% of the Massachusetts population, they are not only underrepresented in national government but in the government of our own state.

This exhibit celebrates the hard work and achievements won by the women of Massachusetts. We hope you will come to view the exhibit, which is now open. The State Library is located on the third floor, Room 341, in the State House in Boston. Please visit our website at www.mass.gov/lib for more information regarding hours and directions.

Above: Members of the Caucus of Women Legislators outside the House of Representatives, December 1990.

Cambridge Women in Politics

The Library is pleased to announce the opening of another new exhibit, Cambridge Women in Politics, which will run September 21 to December 18 at Cambridge City Hall.

The exhibit is located along the staircase on the first and second floors and highlights five prominent Cantabrigian women who have played important roles in the city's political life. Current Mayor E. Denise Simmons, current State Representative Martha "Marty" Walz, current State Representative Alice Wolf, former Mayor Barbara Ackermann, and former Mayor Sheila Russell are all featured. Cambridge Women in Politics is a precursor to Massachusetts Women in Politics, the State Library's Winter 2010 exhibit produced in collaboration with the Massachusetts Caucus of Women Legislators.

Cambridge Women in Politics is presented by the State Library of Massachusetts in collaboration with the Office of Mayor E. Denise Simmons and the Massachusetts Caucus of Women Legislators.

Cambridge City Hall
795 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139
Monday 8:30am - 8pm
Tuesday - Thursday 8:30am - 5pm
Friday 8:30am - 12pm

- Lacy Crews Stoneburner, Preservation Librarian

Holyoke: Queen of Industrial Cities

The library's newest exhibit, Holyoke: Queen of Industrial Cities, will open on September 14 and run through January 15, 2010.

This exhibit highlights State Library collections regarding Holyoke, Massachusetts, and tells the story of the Industrial Revolution's impact on the town. Books, maps, and photographs of one of the country's first planned industrial towns will be included in the display. This exhibit was produced in collaboration with the Holyoke Public Library, and photographs from their Milan P. Warner collection will be on display. Warner, a Holyoke photographer in the 1880s and 1890s, captured beautiful black and white images of the town during its first industrial boom.

The exhibit will be on display through January at the State Library of Massachusetts, Room 341 of the Massachusetts State House.

- Lacy Crews Stoneburner, Preservation Librarian

Ernest Dudley Chase: A Worldview in Maps: Exhibit now on view at the State Library

A new exhibit at the State Library of Massachusetts highlights original, decorative maps created and published in the 1930s and 1940s by Ernest Dudley Chase, a graphic artist from Winchester, Mass.

Born in Lowell, Ernest Dudley Chase (1878-1966) worked for Rust Craft Publishers, which printed greeting cards at its plant in Dedham. Chase was the acknowledged expert in the greeting card business in the United States with publication of his book The Romance of Greeting Cards (1926), the first complete history of the greeting card industry. Chase’s maps were an extension of his work as a graphic artist for Rust Craft and also reflected an international trend toward pictorial mapmaking.

These decorative maps, which experienced a resurgence in public popularity after 1913, are a genre in which the cartography is animated with illustrations of buildings, people, and animals. Often including historical references, the maps also frequently depicted airplanes and other modes of transportation. Borrowing from typical Renaissance cartography, Chase and other pictorial mapmakers used embellishments like compass roses, ornate cartouches, and decorative borders.

Chase’s maps revel in a colorful, idiosyncratic, and whimsical view of the world. This exhibit of his original cartographic creations showcases maps of Boston, Massachusetts, New England, the United States, and the world.

This free exhibit will be on display outside the State Library of Massachusetts, Room 341 of the State House, Boston, through September 7, 2009.

-Special Collections Staff

Preservation Work on the New Exhibit is Complete

The library is excited to bring our new exhibit, Ernest Dudley Chase: A Worldview in Maps, to the public. In this exhibit the library is expanding the number of original collections on display. Before any collections can be exhibited, they must be examined and any preservation issues must be addressed. All of the maps on exhibit were surface cleaned, repaired with Japanese tissue, and encapsulated for exhibit.

Since these maps are from the 1930s - 60s and still in very good condition, we decided to create an encapsulation for exhibit only, that will be removed once the exhibit is over. This exhibit encapsulation consists of a backing sheet of 10 point folder stock with an overlay of Mylar. The two pieces are adhered on the top and bottom edges with double-sided tape used for traditional encapsulation.



This type of encapsulation will provide support for the maps while on display and also is reusable. Once the maps have been removed from the encapsulations, the two pieces of double-sided tape will be cut away. This will leave two large pieces of materials that will be used in future preservation projects. This is one small way that the preservation lab is making the most of the materials we have to help both the Earth and the budget.

The map shown in this entry, Historic Massachusetts: a travel map to help you feel at home in the Bay State, was published in 1964. The library has two versions of this map: the one on exhibit was created to draw tourists from the World's Fair in New York to Massachusetts for vacation, while another version was created as a general tourism map. We hope that visitors to Boston this summer will spend some time at the State Library enjoying this exhibit of these wonderful maps by Ernest Dudley Chase.

Ernest Dudley Chase: A Worldview in Maps opens May 22 and runs through September 7, 2009 and is located in the exhibit cases outside of the main library, room 341 of the Massachusetts State House. The exhibit is open to the public from 8 am to 6 pm, Monday through Friday.

- Lacy Crews, Preservation Librarian

From the Preservation Intern

To prepare for the upcoming exhibit called Ernest Dudley Chase: A Worldview in Maps held in the State Library from May 22 - September 7, 2009, I have been helping the special collections department with its maps. The map on the left is an example of one of Mr. Chase's maps called The Story Map of Flying.

To prepare the maps, I cleaned the front and back of the maps with a dry cleaning sponge. This sponge is not a typical dish washing sponge. Instead, a dry cleaning sponge is rubbery, it is never wet, and a thin piece is cut off when the sponge becomes saturated with dirt. I also used a non-abrasive, non-smudging, vinyl eraser pencil to remove visible marks.

After the maps were cleaned, I repaired any paper tears the maps had with a Japanese mending paper called Kizukishi. I cooked paste to adhere the Japanese mending paper to the map. To cook paste, I mixed five tablespoons of water to one tablespoon of neutral pH pure wheat starch paste that is a powder form. To get the thick consistency, I placed the liquid paste in the microwave for one minute. Every six seconds, I paused the microwave to check on the paste. It was interesting to see the paste thicken slightly every six seconds. The paste may also be placed on a double boiler, but as the Special Collections Department has a microwave, the paste was microwaved. After the paste thickened, I brushed a layer of paste on the Japanese mending paper and used a microspatula to apply the Japanese mending paper to the paper tear on the back of the map. The mending paper was smoothed out to elongate paper fibers and create an even adhesion. A sandwich of blotter paper, non-woven polyester, repaired map, non-woven polyester, and blotter paper was created and weights were place on top. The weights are left overnight and in the morning any stray paper fibers were trimmed. The image below includes the tools used to repair the maps.


Clockwise from top: Water, brush container, wheat starch paste, pencil, water "pen" for tearing pieces of Japanese mending paper, microspatula, Mylar for applying paste to mending paper, Japanese mending paper.



Stay tuned for the next post, which will include encapsulating the maps for exhibit display!

- Tina Chan, Preservation Intern