New England Regional Fellowship Consortium
Consortium Participants
The New England Regional Fellowship Consortium includes 17 repositories, and a learned society. Collections at the participating institutions are broadly representative of the New England region and span the period from pre-contact to the present day. They include personal papers, organizational records, and printed works (both primary and secondary) as well as paintings, engravings, furniture, maps, photographs, architectural drawings, and materials in many other areas of collecting. Many of the organizations own and exhibit important historic houses.
Baker
Library, Harvard Business School
Visit the Baker Library's
website.
While the
resources of Baker Library cover a wide range of dates, geographical
locations, and subject areas, they are particularly strong
in documenting the growth of American business and industry
from the late 18th century through the early 20th century.
Researchers will find extensive manuscript collections as
well as significant holdings of trade catalogs, trade cards,
industrial photographs, and corporate reports. These research
materials are furthermore supported by comprehensive book
collections, which are especially rich in trade publications,
government documents, corporate histories and publications,
and business directories. Baker Library also houses the Kress
Collection of Business and Economics, an expansive collection
of rare books published before 1850, as well as the official
archives of the Harvard Business School.
Boston
Athenæum
Visit the Boston
Athenæum's website.
The Athenæum's collections consist of over half a million volumes and are
particularly strong in the areas of Boston history, New England
state and local history, and biography. Major special collections
complement these holdings. These include one of the largest
collections of Confederate imprints in the United States,
prints and photographs, broadsides, Boston newspapers, and
fine printing. The Athenæum also has an especially strong collection of paintings and
busts.
Bostonian Society
Visit the Bostonian Society's website.
The library and museum collections of The Bostonian Society consist of a wide range of textual and visual material and artifacts. The Library collection includes over 7,000 books, 35,000 photographs, 2,000 architectural drawings, 400 maps, approximately 250 manuscript collections, ephemera, and scrapbooks. The Museum collection consists of approximately 7,000 paintings, prints, drawings, textiles, furniture, ceramics, and historical artifacts, including maritime objects, military items, fire-fighting equipment, relics, and objects from Boston businesses. These collections are particularly effective in documenting the history of Boston in the late 18th and 19th centuries, including architectural history and the built environment, the lives and activities of prominent political and economic leaders, and the contributions of 19th-century civic, charitable and social organizations. The collections also contain a significant amount of 20th-century material.
Colonial Society of Massachusetts
Visit the Colonial Society of Massachusetts' website.
Since its founding in 1892, the Society has dedicated itself
to advancing the study of early America, especially the colonies
of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay. Scholars in the colonial
and Revolutionary periods have long considered the Society's
published documentary collections essential to their research.
The Society also conducts educational programs for its members
and others, and through prizes as well as in conferences and
other forums, it recognizes individual research. Out of this
desire to promote first-rate scholarship in the early American
period, the Society is pleased to underwrite a Colonial Society
of Massachusetts Regional Fellowship.
Connecticut Historical Society
Visit
the Connecticut Historical Society's website.
The Connecticut Historical Society's library houses approximately
100,000 printed volumes, 3,000,000 manuscripts in 10,000 distinct
collections, as well as important holdings of broadsides,
maps, newspapers, and other materials that make it an essential
resource for documenting the history and development of Connecticut
and New England. In addition, the CHS museum collection includes
nearly 35,000 artifacts and 250,000 graphics.
Francis
A. Countway Library of Medicine
Visit
the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine's website.
Established in 1965 as a result of a merger between the Boston
Medical Library (founded in 1875) and the Harvard Medical
Library (founded in 1782), the Countway Library is a leading
center for the study of the history of health care and medicine.
The Countway's Rare Books & Special Collections department
contains 250,000 volumes of books, approximately 20 million
manuscripts (including the archives of the Harvard Medical
School and the personal papers of many New England physicians),
30,000 photographs and prints, and small collections of art
and artifacts. The Countway also houses the renowned Warren
Museum, which contains 15,000 items.
Harvard
Law School, Special Collections
Visit the Harvard Law School Library's website.
With nearly
2,000 linear feet of manuscripts, approximately 200,000 rare
books, and more than 70,000 paintings, prints, photographs,
and other visual materials, the Special Collections Department
of the Harvard Law School houses one of the world's most comprehensive
collections of research materials for the study of the history
of the law in general and of Anglo-American law in particular.
Particularly noteworthy are its virtually complete collections
of English and American statute books, case reporters, and
legal treatises; more than 10,000 volumes, spanning the last
five centuries, of the accounts of civil and criminal trials;
extensive holdings of the papers of Joseph Story; Simon Greenleaf;
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.; Louis Brandeis; Felix Frankfurter;
Roscoe Pound and other jurists and legal educators; and important
manuscript collections relating to such organizations and
events as the New England Watch and Ward Society, the Sacco-Vanzetti
trial, and the Alger Hiss case. The legal art collection,
by far the best anywhere of its type, has portrait and photographich
images of lawyers and judges as well as of famous trials,
and legal controversies.
Historic Deerfield
Visit Historic Deerfield's website.
Historic Deerfield is not hosting fellows in 2010-2011
Internationally recognized collections of furniture, early American silver, English ceramics and Chinese export porcelain, textiles, needlework, and costume are complemented by important holdings of manuscripts, printed works, and microform. The Memorial Libraries, comprising the collections of Historic Deerfield and the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, feature extensive holdings of family papers from the Deerfield area, hundreds of diaries and account books, church records and manuscript sermons, as well as major collections of secondary sources in local history and the decorative arts.
Houghton Library, Harvard University
Visit Houghton's website.
Founded in 1942, Houghton Library is the principal rare book and manuscript
repository of Harvard College Library and one of the preeminent academic research
libraries in the Unites States. Holding approximately 500,000 books and more than
10 million manuscripts, Houghton is recognized as a leading center for the study
of American, English, and Continental history and literature, with special emphasis
in printing, graphic arts, theatre history, and New England history and culture.
Maine Historical Society
Visit the Maine Historical
Society's website.
The Society holds the most comprehensive collection of printed
and manuscript materials documenting the history of Maine.
In addition to 125,000 books, pamphlets, newspapers, and other
printed items, the collection contains over 2 million manuscripts
documenting the social, economic, political, and cultural
history of Maine and New England from the 17th century to
the present. Holdings also include 3,500 maps and atlases,
80,000 photographs, and 150,000 architectural and engineering
drawings.
Massachusetts Historical Society
Go back to the Massachusetts Historical
Society's homepage.
Manuscripts
form the heart of the collections at the Massachusetts Historical
Society. The Society houses more than 10 million pieces in
3,500 separate collections of personal papers and institutional
records. The Society's collections also include several hundred
thousand books, more than 20,000 broadsides, 30,000 18th-
and 19th-century pamphlets, 5,000 maps, 150,000 microforms,
and 200,000 historic photographs. The Society offers about
20 four-week grants through a separate competition, and applicants
who would like to use its holdings for more than two weeks
are referred to its program of short-term fellowships.
Mystic Seaport
Visit Mystic Seaport's
website.
The Museum's
collections record the American maritime experience. Mystic
Seaport holds more than 2 million items, including vessels,
photographs, film and video footage, manuscripts, imprints,
art, tools, and artifacts dating from the 18th century to
the present. At the G. W. Blunt White Library, researchers
will find 1,000,000 manuscript pieces, 75,000 volumes of books
and periodicals, 2,000 rolls of microfilm, 1,000 ships registers,
1,300 logbooks, 700 audiotape oral history interviews, 200
videotape interviews, and 9,000 maps and charts.
New
England Historic Genealogical Society
Visit the New
England Historic Genealogical Society's website.
Founded
in 1845, the Society has been a pioneer in the study of the
region's family history for more than a century and a half.
Its vast collection of genealogies, local histories, and manuscripts—200,000
volumes, 20,000 microfilms, and 3,500 linear feet of manuscripts—make
it an essential resource for scholars interested in the social
and demographic history of New England.
New
Hampshire Historical Society
Visit the New Hampshire
Historical Society's website.
The New
Hampshire Historical Society houses the finest collections
anywhere of printed, manuscript, and pictorial materials relating
to New Hampshire history.
Printed collections—about 40,000 volumes—include
thousands of genealogies, town histories, and biographies
as well as more than 1,000 maps. Manuscript holdings comprise
1,700 linear feet of personal papers and institutional records.
There are 800,000 pages of New Hampshire newspapers from 1756
to 1900 and 200,000 negatives and photographic images. The
library also holds a unique card index that provides biographical
information on about 30,000 "New Hampshire Notables."
Museum collections include works of the "White Mountain
School" of landscape artists, New Hampshire furniture,
and materials associated with the lives and careers of many
noteworthy New Hampshire residents.
Rhode
Island Historical Society
Visit the Rhode Island Historical
Society's website.
The library
and museum collections of the Society are vital to the study
of Rhode Island's history. The library's printed collection
includes local, military, economic, social, political, and
ecclesiastical histories; municipal and corporate publications;
and large holdings of Rhode Island newspapers and early imprints.
The library's genealogy section is among the largest in New
England. Manuscript collections date from 1652 to the present.
Researchers will find personal papers and organizational records.
The graphics collection includes photographs, prints, broadsides,
maps, watercolors, drawings, engravings, and ephemera. Important
museum holdings include collections of Rhode Island furniture,
works of local artists, and historical objects.
Schlesinger
Library
Visit the Schlesinger
Library's website.
Established
in 1943, the Library holds manuscripts, books, periodicals,
photographs, ephemera, oral histories, and audiovisual materials
that document the history of American women in the U.S. and
abroad, primarily during the 19th and 20th centuries. Especially
well-represented are women's rights, social reform, family
history, health, sexuality, work, the professions, Radcliffe
history, and food and culinary history. Over 2,200 manuscript
collections include papers of notables such as Susan B. Anthony
and Harriet Beecher Stowe, of lesser-known women, and of women's
organizations such as the Boston YWCA and the National Organization
for Women. The collection of books and periodicals covers
all aspects of the 19th- and 20th-century social and intellectual
history, and includes many volumes on cookery and household
management. The library offers eight to ten other research
grants, and is part of the Radcliffe Institute's community
of resident fellows who pursue advanced work across a wide
range of academic disciplines, professions, and the creative
arts.
Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College
Visit the Sophia Smith Collection's website.
The Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College is an internationally recognized repository of manuscripts, archives, photographs, periodicals and other primary sources in women's history. It consists of over 8000 linear feet of material in manuscript, print, and audiovisual formats that document the historical experience of women in the United States and abroad from the colonial era to the present. Subject strengths include birth control and reproductive rights, women's rights, suffrage, the contemporary women's movement, U.S. women working abroad, the arts (especially theatre), the professions (especially journalism and social work), and middle-class family life in nineteenth- and twentieth-century New England.
Vermont
Historical Society
Visit
the Vermont Historical Society's website.
The Vermont Historical
Society is not hosting fellows in 2010-2011
The Society
collects, preserves, and makes available a wide variety of
materials documenting the history and people of Vermont. The
Society's manuscript collection is particularly strong in
family history, agriculture, railroads, religion, emigration,
government and politics, and early crafts and trades. Books
and pamphlets date from the 1770s to the present and address
all aspects of Vermont history. Other important library collections
include maps, broadsides, periodicals, photographs, and genealogy.
The Society's museum holds more than 20,000 artifacts of Vermont
history, including paintings, furniture, and decorative-arts
objects.