Poster, ca.1925

In 1923, Katherine Frazier established the Playhouse-in-the-Hills as a venue for theatrical performances in the small Berkshire County town of Cummington, Mass. Frazier’s vision, however, soon led her to expand the project into the Cummington School of the Arts (later the Cummington Community of the Arts), which she envisioned as “an environment congenial to creative activity.” Over its seventy years of operation, the School emphasized creative collaboration across the fine arts, offering not only performances, but summer residencies and six-week courses where writers, artists, performers, and musicians could study and practice under the guidance of visiting artists. Among its noted alumni were luminaries such as Helen Frankenthaler, Willem de Kooning, Diane Arbus, Marianne Moore, and Archibald Macleish, and the school was a starting point for Harry Duncan’s renowned Cummington Press. The increasing financial challenges facing not-for-profit organizations led a cessation of operations in about 1993.

The records of the Cummington School of the Arts offer a cross-sectional view of the School across its years of operation. In addition to a very small selection of personal material from Katherine Frazier, the collection includes valuable correspondence and ephemera relating to the school’s philosophy and founding, and nearly a third of the collection consists of records of students, often including their applications, comments on the work accomplished in Cummington, and occasionally, copies of work produced. The balance of the collection consists of many of the school’s publications, administrative materials (including curricula and planning documents), and financial and fundraising materials.

The Department of Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) of the W.E.B. Du Bois Library offers short-term residential fellowships to assist younger scholars in conducting research in its collections. Among the approximately 15,000 linear feet of manuscripts held by SCUA are many valuable collections for the study of social change in the United States, including the papers of the most important exponent of the politics and culture of the twentieth century, W.E.B. Du Bois. In addition, the University Library houses over three million volumes and a rich suite of electronic resources to support advanced research in the humanities. Comprehensive, searchable guides and finding aids to SCUA’s collections are available on this website.

View past Du Bois Fellows

Application information

Download the application form (rtf file).

Experiential Training in Historic Information Resources (Ethir) is an initiative of the Department of Special Collections and University Archives in the UMass Amherst Libraries designed to provide students with structured, hands-on experience using and interpreting historical documentary resources. As part of our effort to integrate Special Collections more fully into the learning and research mission of the university, we offer an opportunity for select graduate students to work in the Department on a research project, while gaining first-hand experience in historical and archival praxis. Ethir fellows will take part in a range of activities in the digital humanities tied to primary source material, including curating exhibits, building digital corpora, or developing other interpretive materials.

Successful applicants will work with SCUA staff to identify a digital project that will make use of their interests and experience and that will provide a creative opportunity for building new digital skills. We ask students write a 1-2 page statement of interest outlining how their research interests might engage the department and the primary source material we collect.

Projects may include work with our collections in:

• Disability rights
• Sport innovation (e.g. Mark H. McCormack Papers)
• Drug policy (NORML, Lester Grinspoon)

Or fellows can propose to work with a collection or topic of their choice.

Through the Ethir program, we also offer orientation for classes in any discipline that would benefit from exposure to the primary archival resources under our stewardship. Our staff are happy to work with the faculty to increase their students’ information literacy in a variety of legacy formats as well as with new digital media.

View past Ethir Fellows

Application information

Download the application form (rtf file).

Ethir Outcomes

For Fellows

• Provide hands-on experience using and interpreting historical materials
• Expose fellows to historical and archival standards and practices
• Assist fellows in developing research projects based on primary resources
• Increase access and provide additional scholarly layers for SCUA’s collections
• Foster information literacy in legacy historical formats
• Enhance learning and research at the university
• Create web-accessible guides and exhibits that will enhance fellow’s portfolios
• Fellows will produce tangible products for public consumption (e.g., finding aids, guides, digital collections, exhibits) based upon new or under-described collections, and they may assist in providing instruction for peers and classes

For Faculty

We will provide structured orientation for individuals and classes involving active learning, with an emphasis on:

• Handling original materials (paleography, formats)
• Interpreting historical content
• Interpreting historically specific forms of information
• Navigating the Department’s web resources
• Translating research interests into usable queries

U.S. Marshal of Massachusetts in charge of collecting the census for his judicial district in 1860. Includes petitions, letters of introduction and applications to him from prospective enumerators, list of assistants and their signed oaths, census returns, related correspondence, and certificates of receipt from the marshal’s office. Also contains letters from Joseph C.G. Kennedy to Freeman, an instruction book for assistants, the marshal’s oath, and a receipt for a set of returns from the Secretary of the Commonwealth.

Founded in 1895, the Girls Club of Greenfield provides high quality early care and educational services to the girls of Franklin County, Massachusetts, and advocates for the rights of children and their families. During the school year, the Club offers diverse programming, ranging from an infant room and preschool to after school activities that promote teamwork, community spirit, social skills, and confidence. Since 1958, they have also operated a summer camp, Lion Knoll, in Leyden.

The records of the Girls Club of Greenfield include by-laws, annual reports, reports and meeting minutes of the Board of Directors, correspondence, and ledgers and account books. Also contains program files for daycare, summer camp, education worker programs, and others, personnel records, membership and committee lists, newsletters, press releases, ledgers, account books, scrapbooks, news clippings, photographs, slides, and artifacts.

A private, non-profit corporation founded in 1965 in Northampton, Massachusetts to finance community action programs for eliminating poverty and assisting low income people. Programs included day care centers, Neighborhood Youth Corps, Summer Head Start, a drug addiction clinic at the jail, Legal Services, and the Foster Grandparent Program.

Records comprise bylaws and organizational charts, annual reports, board of directors minutes; administrative directors’ records, including correspondence with the federal agencies and state agencies granting funds, grant applications and awards, program plans, financial and legal documents, personnel records and staff training directives; the agency newsletter County Voice, Noticero Latina; and newsclippings about welfare programs.

A granting agency that advises and provides funding for grass roots, non-profit projects and organizations in order to bring about broad social change by addressing local issues and community needs. Records include minutes, reports, correspondence, successful and unsuccessful grant applications from Western Massachusetts organizations, grant source information, and grantee materials including organization reports, publications, member lists, clippings, and other materials.

Five College Radio Observatory

Beginning with his dissertation in theoretical astrophysics “Local irregularities in a universe satisfying the cosmological principle” (Harvard, 1961), William M. Irvine enjoyed a distinguished career as an astronomer and a role as one of the primary figures in developing astronomy at the Five Colleges. Arriving at UMass in 1966, Irvine helped build the graduate program in astronomy and beginning in 1969, he was a motive force in establishing the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory. Focused largely on the chemistry of dense interstellar clouds and the physics and chemistry of comets, and with a broad interest in bioastronomy/astrobiology, Irvine has been a prolific contributor to his field, and has served as President of the Commission on Bioastronomy at the International Astronomical Union, Chair of the Division for Planetary Sciences at the American Astronomical Society, a Councillor of the International Society for the Study of the origin of Life, and a member of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The Irvine Papers offer a thorough record of the establishment of the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory from 1969 through its dedication in Oct. 1976, along with insights into the growth of astronomy at UMass. Correspondence, memoranda, grant applications, and many dozens of photographs offer insight into the financial and political challenges of building the Observatory in the Quabbin watershed. The collection also includes notes for teaching Astronomy 101 and 223 (planetary science). Irvine’s published works are listed in the Libraries’ ScholarWorks author gallery.

Tent caterpillar

A specialist in human genetics, Arthur P. Mange studied the population genetics of small villages, the genetics of fruit flies (Drosophila), worked on early computer applications of genetic models and statistics, wrote textbooks on genetics, taught in the Biology and Zoology departments at the University, and is a published photographer of gravestones and whimsical signs. Mange was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1931 and earned a B.A. in physics from Cornell, and an M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. Mange joined the University faculty in 1964, teaching genetics until his retirement in 1995.

The Arthur Mange Papers are comprised of his extensive documentation of the inhabitants of villages in the northern United States and southern Canada, including information about certain genetic factors and their result on the population. His records cover the 1960s and in some cases the early 1970s. Mange was also a talented photographer, and his collection includes approximately 200 of his photographs, including abstract and nature photos and images of New England scenery and the UMass campus.

Formed in 1887 as the Massachusetts branch of the American Federation of Labor, the Massachusetts AFL-CIO currently represents the interests of over 400,000 working people in the Commonwealth. Like its parent organization, the national AFL-CIO, the Mass. AFL-CIO is an umbrella organization, a union of unions, and engages in political education, legislative action, organizing, and education and training.

The official records of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO provide insight into the aims and administrative workings of the organization. These includes a nearly complete run of proceedings and reports from its conventions since 1902, except for a five year gap 1919-1923, minutes and agendas for the meetings of the Executive Council, and the President’s files (1982- ). The collection is particularly strong in the period since about 1980.