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Hadley Neighbors for Sensible Development

Hadley Neighbors for Sensible Development Records

2003-2007
1 box 0.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1052

A local, grassroots organization, Hadley Neighbors for Sensible Development coalesced in the early 2000s to advocate for environmentally and socially responsible development in Hadley, Mass. Working through the town planning board and town meeting, the group successfully opposed the construction of Walmart Superstore in town and worked to mitigate the impact of Lowes and other big box stores along the Route 9 corridor.

A miscellaneous assortment of documents relating to work in town meeting and with the town planning board, the collection includes notes, newspaper clippings, and assorted background information.

Subjects

City planning--Massachusetts--HadleyHadley (Mass.)--History
Related collections: Massachusetts (West)
AFL-CIO Hampshire-Franklin Central Labor Council

AFL-CIO Hampshire-Franklin Central Labor Council Records

1977-2007
1 box 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1074
Finding aid

The Hampshire-Franklin Central Labor Council is a democratically-elected body drawn from among AFL-CIO-affiliated unions in Hampshire and Franklin Counties, Mass. The Labor Council advocates for workers’ interests at the state and local level and works with its members and communities on social and economic justice issues.

This slender collection consists of the minutes of monthly meetings of HFCLC for three decades beginning in 1977, with some brief gaps in the latter years.

Gift of Dale Melcher, Aug. 2016

Subjects

Labor unions--Massachusetts

Types of material

Minutes (Administrative records)
Related collections: Labor, Massachusetts (West)
Ponakin Mill

Ponakin Mill Ledger

1910-1916
1 vol. 0.1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1073 bd
Finding aid

A textile manufacturer, Ponakin (or Ponikin) Mill was established on the north branch of the Nashua River, half a mile from North Lancaster, in 1861, near the site of an earlier cotton mill. By the end of the Civil War, it boasted 40 employees who produced 500,000 yards of brown sheeting, but by the time it was incorporated in 1888, specializing in the production of cotton yarn, manufacturing in Lancaster was already on the decline. The company survived at least into the 1920s.

This survival from a central Massachusetts textile manufacturer contains miscellaneous business records copied into a letterpress (or wet press) copy book, in which a combination of moisture and pressure was used to transfer ink from the original onto a sheet of tissue paper. This records cover a wide terrain, including inventories of stock on hand, accounts payable, insurance and IRS tax information, payroll data (without names), shipping lists and lists of customers, and a few copies of business letters.

Acquired from Charles Apfelbaum, 1987

Subjects

Lancaster (Mass.)--Economic conditions--20th centuryTextile manufacturers--Massachusetts--Lancaster

Types of material

Letterpress copybooks
Related collections: Manufacturing, Massachusetts (Central)
Arena, Natalie C.

Natalie C. Arena Photograph Collection

1956-1961
1 box 1 linear feet
Call no.: PH 087
Depiction of Joanne Fortune in her dorm room, photo by Nancy Arena
Joanne Fortune in her dorm room, photo by Nancy Arena

Raised in Short Hills, New Jersey, Natalie “Nancy” Arena’s early education included the Lexington School for the Deaf in New York and the Bruce Street School in Newark, N.J. In 1956, her father transferred her to the Clarke School for the Deaf because of the school’s emphasis on speech and use of the English language. She stayed at Clarke until she graduated with honors in 1961. After Clarke, Arena went to Millburn High in Millburn, N.J., where she was integrated with hearing students. Arena had a long career in data processing and translated the love of sewing she learned at Clarke into a life-long hobby of quilting.

The Natalie C. Arena Photograph Collection consists of photographs taken by Arena of her friends, teachers, and Clarke School outings and activities. Her photographs show the life of a student at the Clarke School during the late-50s and early-60s. Subjects include dorm rooms, camping trips, gym activities, and class trips.

Subjects

Clarke School for the DeafDeaf--Education

Types of material

Photographs
Related collections: Disability, Education, Photographs
Talking Truth

Talking Truth Collection

2015-2018
2 boxes 0.75 linear feet
Call no.: RG 040/2 T35
Depiction of

Co-founded by Madeleine Charney, Lena Fletcher, and Kris Nelson, Talking Truth began as a workshop on climate activism held during the Fall of 2015. The original workshop focused on the overwhelming nature of the climate crisis and provided a three part discussion aimed at helping UMass Amherst students, faculty, and librarians find their individual voices as activists and to support collaboration among UMass community members in their efforts to combat climate change. The discussion included a letter writing activity asking writers to share their feelings about climate change. This activity originated in Fletcher’s Natural Resources Conservation course, “Environment and Society” and more letters were written at subsequent Talking Truth events. Through 2018, Talking Truth held a variety of other events including film screenings, author talks, and a booth at the Amherst, Mass. Sustainability Festival.

The Talking Truth Collection consists of letters written during Talking Truth workshops, events, and in Lena Fletcher’s classes. There is also a small group of drawings done as part of the “Teach-in, freak out: building power in a climate of urgency” on November 19th, 2015, which was sponsored by the UMass Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign.

Subjects

Climatic change--Social aspects
Related collections: Conservationism, Environment, Social change, UMass (1947- )
Gibbons, Ian R.

Ian R. Gibbons Papers

ca.1965-2018
3 boxes 4.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1069

The cell biologist and biophysicist Eugene R. Gibbons was widely noted for his discovery of microtubule-associated motor proteins. For his doctoral research at Cambridge University in 1957 , Gibbons used an electron microscope to analyze chromosomal organization during mitosis and meiosis, earning him a call from Harvard University to help establish an electron mcircoscopic laboratory. While working on Tetrahymena to answer the question of how simple proteins can push cells through the water, he isolated and described a motor protein he called dynein, which moves cargos along microtubules and powers ciliar and flagellar motility. Relocating to the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1967 to become head of the Kewalo Marine Laboratory, and switching his organismal focus to sea urchin sperm, he and his collaborator and wife, Barbara, contined to make fundamental contributions to understanding the role of microtubule sliding in ciliar motility. Gibbons shared the Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine with Ron Vale (2017) and the E.B. Wilson Medal from the American Society of Cell Biology (1994). He died in January 2018 at the age of 86.

The Gibbons papers contain two boxes of laboratory notebooks, a box of his offprints with a small quantity of correspondence. A collection of Gustaf Retzius’s periodical Biologische Untersuchungen (1890-1914) has been transferred to printed materials.

Gift of Wendy Gibbons, Mar. 2019

Subjects

Cell biologistsCilia and ciliary motionTetrahymena
Related collections: Protistology
Lebow, Howard

Howard Lebow Papers

ca.1960-1968
4 boxes 5.5 linear feet
Call no.: FS 115

An accomplished concert pianist and composer, Howard Miles Lebow earned both a BA and MFA at the at the Julliard School of Music. Under the tutelage of Edward Steuermann, a pupil of composer Ferruccio Busoni, Lebow exceled as a pianist, performing throughout Europe and the Americas. Joining the rapidly expanding Music faculty at the University of Massachusetts in September 1965, Lebow mixed lecturing and performing until 1968, when he died in an automobile crash at the age of 32. The Howard M. Lebow Scholarship Fund was established in his name in 1968.

The Lebow Collection contains concert programs of many of Lebow’s performances, copy manuscripts, manuscripts of his own compositions, performance notes, and newspapers clippings about and concert programs of other performers. There are also materials that were interleaved within his extensive sheet music collection, now separated and organized by composition. An extensive collection of sheet music has been added to the Libraries’ general collections.

Related collections: Music, UMass (1947- ), UMass faculty
Lerner, Frederick Andrew, 1945-

Frederick Andrew Lerner Science Fiction Collection

1939-1996
304 titles 15 linear feet
Call no.: RB 016

Fred Lerner is a librarian, bibliographer, and historian who has written extensively on American science fiction. After earning three degrees from Columbia University, including his MLS and DLS (1981), Lerner worked for many years in information science for Spectra, Inc., and the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. His diverse including work in radio, writing about the history of psychiatry, libraries, Rudyard Kipling, and science fiction.

The Lerner collection contains a cross-section of American science fiction writing concentrated largely in the 1960s through mid-1980s.

Gift of Frederck Andrew Lerner, 2010-2011

Subjects

Science fiction
Related collections: Printed materials, Prose writing
Ewell, Maryo Gard

Maryo Gard Ewell Papers

1971-2010
7 boxes 9.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1066
Part of: National Arts Policy Archive and Library

A pioneer in arts programs in community development, Maryo Gard Ewell is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College with masters degrees from Yale (1972) and the University of Colorado Denver (1992). Beginning her career with arts councils in Connecticut, Ewell went on to become leadership positions wih the Illinois Arts Council and the Colorado Council on the Arts (1982-2003). A co-author of the influential The Arts in the Small Community (2006), she is a sought-after speaker and collaborator, serving as a board member and consultant for arts agencies across the country. Among other awards, she has been recognized with the “Arts Are The Heart Award” in Colorado; an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Goucher College; and the Selina Roberts Ottum Award from Americans for the Arts (1995). Since retiring in 2003, Ewell has remained active as a consultant, educator, and speaker.

This collection contains materials relating to two significant developments in the history of of community arts in the United States: records relating to how selected states decentralized arts funding in 1970s, and to early efforts of the National Endowment for the Arts to create a program to serve local arts agencies from the mid-1970s through the mid-1990s. In addition, there are records documenting a project, commissioned by Americans for the Arts in 2007, to trace the history of community arts councils from the first in 1948 through the 1960s when the National Endowment for the Humanities was formed.

Subjects

Americans for the Arts (Organization)Arts--Economic aspectsCommunity arts projectsNational Endowment for the Arts
Related collections: Arts management
Whitcomb, John M.

John M. Whitcomb Collection

ca.1905-1969
ca.400 titles
Call no.: RB 038

John Merrall Whitcomb was an architect, researcher, and life-long scholar. Born in New York City in July 1907, Whitcomb earned an undergraduate degree at Yale (1930) and a degree in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania (1934) and began working his way up the ranks of the architectural profession in Boston. After wartime service in the Air Force, he resumed his career, establishing his own firm in Cambridge, Johnson and Whitcomb. He died in 1998.

Part of a large collection of books amassed over a lifetime, this collection focuses largely on Whitcomb’s interest in “seditionist” literature, including works on Anglo-American Socialism and Communism, as well as topics ranging from American labor to political and social history, the rise of fascism in Europe, Soviet studies, the Vietnam War, and political theory. The bulk of the material dates from the 1930s through early 1960s.

Subjects

Communism--Great BritainCommunism--United StatesSocialism--Great BritainSocialism--United States
Related collections: Communism & Socialism, Labor, Printed materials, Vietnam War
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