Mount Auburn Cemetery: Preserving Community Memories

FAIN: PY-253094-17

Friends of Mount Auburn Cemetery (Cambridge, MA 02138-5517)
Bree Harvey (Project Director: May 2016 to August 2019)

Two digitization days for photographs, documents, artifacts, and ephemera related to the 100,000 people buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery, and preservation workshops for participants. Notable figures buried there include Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Buckminster Fuller, and Isabella Stewart Gardner.  The Friends of Mount Auburn Cemetery would contact those on file for family lots and graves, as well as partner with community organizations to publicize the events, which will also include workshops on preservation, digitization, and preserving digital collections.  Materials digitized would enhance a mobile app currently under development, which uses GPS coordinates to document the graves and monuments and which includes biographical and historical information about those buried at the cemetery.

The Friends of Mount Auburn Cemetery (FOMAC) seeks a Common Heritage grant to host two digitization days which will aid in the discovery and digitization of a range of archival cultural heritage materials held by the public that help to tell the story of Mount Auburn Cemetery and the 100,000 people buried and commemorated here. Consultants from the Northeast Document Conservation Center will hold two separate but programmatically identical "digitization days", one each in Cambridge and Watertown, Massachusetts, organize digitization, and create metadata. Digitized materials will be provided free of charge to the public who bring in their documents and artifacts and, with permission, will be used as interpretive and educational content for Mount Auburn's new free Mobile App as well as shared on the Digital Commonwealth. FOMAC will also hold a series of public programs to highlight the importance of preservation and provide additional context for the digitization process.

Associated Products

Remembering the Great and the Good: Discoveries from Mount Auburn's Family Digitization Project (Exhibition)
Title: Remembering the Great and the Good: Discoveries from Mount Auburn's Family Digitization Project
Curator: Bree Harvey
Abstract: Over the course of nearly 200 years, Mount Auburn has become the final resting place for all those wishing to be buried at the Cemetery, regardless of race, creed, or religion. Mount Auburn is celebrated as the final resting place for Boston's cultural and intellectual leaders including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Julia Ward Howe, Harriet Jacobs, Nathaniel Bowditch, Isabella Stewart Gardner, Fannie Farmer, R. Buckminster Fuller, and B.F. Skinner. Joining its "notable residents" are the servants, soldiers, sailors, midwives, blacksmiths, and everyday people who worked tirelessly to build the economies of Boston, Cambridge, and the surrounding communities. The stories for most of these 100,000 residents are still waiting to be discovered. With its current Family Digitization project, Mount Auburn is strengthening the role of this "landscape of memory," a place founded to offer the lessons of history through a "communion with the dead." Each month the Cemetery provides opportunities for the public to scan photographs, documents, ephemera, and other small objects that help to tell the stories of those buried at Mount Auburn. The materials digitized to date have already added immensely to what we know about those buried at the Cemetery. An exploration of these items also reminds us not only about who we remember but also why and how we remember them.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://mountauburn.org/family-digitization-project/
Primary URL Description: Online exhibit link

Stories from the Watertown and Cambridge Community Digitization Days (Article)
Title: Stories from the Watertown and Cambridge Community Digitization Days
Author: Kara Zelasko
Author: Brittany Costello
Abstract: This article was written by Kara Zelasko and Brittany Costello. Zelasko and Costello are students of Public History at Northeastern University who assisted with Mount Auburn’s Digitization Days this past October.
Year: 2018
Primary URL: https://mountauburn.org/stories-from-the-watertown-and-cambridge-community-digitization-days/
Primary URL Description: Article link on Mount Auburn's website
Access Model: Open access
Format: Other
Periodical Title: Friends of Mount Auburn E-Newsletter
Publisher: Mount Auburn Cemetery

Digitization Days: Revealing the Individuals in our Past (Article)
Title: Digitization Days: Revealing the Individuals in our Past
Author: Anna Moir
Abstract: With over 100,000 people commemorated here, Mount Auburn Cemetery has served as a record for countless memories and historical periods ever since its founding. Our goal is to offer a deeper look at these diverse individuals whenever possible, with the stories and personalities beyond the monuments that represent them today. Thanks to a 2017 Common Heritage grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, we have had the opportunity to celebrate the lives and preserve the memories of our “residents” in new ways, through a series of digitization days that we began hosting in 2018. On the first Friday of each month, anyone with loved ones or ancestors buried at Mount Auburn can sign up to bring in family materials such as photographs and letters to have them digitized, free of charge. Not only are these documents preserved for the future, but they can help us tell a deeper story of the people buried at Mount Auburn through our new Online Memorial Pages feature on our website at www.mountauburn.org/OnlineMemorialPages.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://mountauburn.org/digitization-days-revealing-the-individuals-in-our-past/
Primary URL Description: Article link on Mount Auburn's website
Access Model: Open access
Format: Other
Periodical Title: Friends of Mount Auburn E-Newsletter
Publisher: Mount Auburn Cemetery

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