Leveraging Digitized Materials from the Northeastern University’s Archives and Special Collections

This workshop was part of the 2025-26 Digital Practice Workshop Series, an ongoing collaboration between the Centers for Digital Scholarship (CDS) and Humanities Center that centers topics relating to digital archive and digital humanities. The series is intended to strengthen collaboration between Snell Library and CSSH.

In addition to its abundant collection of analog materials and objects, the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections (NUASC) maintains a rich digital world, with over 85,000 records in its Digital Repository Service (DRS) alone. On November 13, Molly Brown led “Leveraging Digitized Materials from the Northeastern University’s Archives and Special Collections,” a workshop that empowered attendees to step into NUASC’s digital records and materials.

Brown began the workshop with an introduction to NUASC’s holdings, which typically fall into two containers: The University Archives typically include departmental records, group records, audiovisual media, and digitized photographs and media. Additionally, the Special Collections hold historical records that center social justice movements across Boston. Prioritizing the preservation and stewardship of community materials and stories, the Special Collections work to be and remain responsive to community feedback and needs, and commit to ensuring that finding aids (which are community guides in addition to tools) are clear and detailed. The Special Collections also houses digital portals to thematically-organized collections, such as the Boston Asian American Community History Portal and Freedom House Photographs.

While both subsections of NUASC include digitized materials, Brown emphasized that a useful place to start exploring the University’s digital collections is the DRS, which primarily houses digital and digitized materials on Boston’s history, art, infrastructure, activism, and social movements.

When searching the DRS, Brown recommended that visitors toggle search results to grid view, narrowing down format (e.g. Photographs), and using the “Advanced Search” feature to establish a heat map of what years have the most materials (clicking “A-Z sort” displays the earliest year that a search term is present in). In addition to its traditional search features, the DRS also offers Optical Character Recognition (OCR) files for text mining, geolocated photographs of Roxbury for mapping, and detailed photo logs from the now-sunsetted local photography company FayFoto.

During the workshop, Brown also demonstrated search and use tips for the Archives Catalog, which contains searchable finding aids for all of NUASC’s fully processed analog and digital collections. The Catalog, Brown explained, is especially useful for users who have a sense of their topic but not specific search terms.

Detailing what’s in process and upcoming for NUASC’s already-robust digital collections, Brown shared that the NUASC received a grant to fund the digitization of the Elma Ina Lewis papers, which will be conducted in partnership with Snell Library’s Digital Production Services (DPS). There are also a number of collections undergoing digitization, such as the Freedom House Records, highlighting the increasing need for digital material support, including metadata creation, processing, and digitization efforts.

Through approachable and clear demonstrations, a lively Q&A session, and Brown’s evident passion for archives (paired with a deep knowledge of NUASC after nearly 8 years at the University), the workshop equipped attendees with tools and information that make archival research, an often-daunting task, exciting and possible. From Boston Public School Desegregation records to fascinating interviews conducted by Larry Katz, NUASC’s digital collections establish and maintain an extraordinary bridge to the past.