Founded in 1982, the Massachusetts Women in Public Higher Education (MWPHE) is a non-profit organization open to current and prospective women administrators in public higher education in the Commonwealth. Founded in 1982, the MWPHE serves as a support network, enhances professional development, encourages and promotes upward mobility, and addresses issues affecting Massachusetts public higher education and the status of women within the system.

The MWPHE records include administrative files and correspondence that document the organization’s work since its founding.

Established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government, the National Endowment for the Arts has awarded more than $4 billion to support artistic excellence, creativity, and innovation for the benefit of individuals and communities. The NEA extends its work through partnerships with state arts agencies, local leaders, other federal agencies, and the philanthropic sector.

In contributing to the National Arts Policy Archive and Library (NAPAAL), the NEA allowed SCUA to digitize nearly forty years of publications on the arts and arts management. The collection reflects the impact of the arts (including music, literature, and the performing arts) on everyday lives of Americans and include materials intended to support individual and classroom education, information on arts management, reports on the status of the arts, histories of the organization, and much more. All items are cataloged in the UMass Amherst Libraries online catalog and are included in the Internet Archive, where they are available for full-text searchin

Images from the Yankee Publishing Incorporated Records. The originals in this small sub-collection are mostly glass plate negatives taken during the period 1915-1939, and may have been taken by a photographer associated with the Boston Ledger.

Amelia Earhart, 1928-07-09

Dug Out Dan: Dana Smith, East Barre, Vt., Ca.1930

Herbert Hoover on Boston Common, Ca.1930

Nan Howard with lobster, Ca.1930

Abbie Long, Quaker, on Cape Cod, Ca.1930

Oldest telephone operator, Chesterfield, N.H., Ca.1930

Harriet Blackstone, American Mother Goose woman, Ca.1930

Charles Coffin, Freeport, Me., the Maine Hermit, Ca.1930

Cat’s Club, Carlisle, Mass.: James E. Taylor, Ca.1930

Cat’s Club, Carlisle, Mass. James E. Taylor, Ca.1930

Cat’s Club, Carlisle, Mass. James E. Taylor, Ca.1930

Cat’s Club, Carlisle, Mass. James E. Taylor, Ca.1930

Cat with flag, Bell Farm, Lexington, Mass., Ca.1930

Kitty Gordon awakes (cat in a baby carriage), Ca.1930

Lynching scene: breaking down the door (possibly San Jose, Calif.), Ca.1930

Alburgh, Vt., Stone School house, 1899-09-02

Armless Johnson, Ca.1930

Street cleaner, Ca.1930

Doctor who walked on his hands (Boston?), Ca.1930

Old fisherman, Cape Cod, Ca.1930

Old town crier, Provincetown: Walter Smith, the last in America (died Dec. 5, 1932), Ca.1930

Mr. Poole, Jaffrey, N.H., Ca.1930

George Willey, Sutton, N.H. One man band. Willey was a drummer boy during the Civil War, Ca.1930

Capt. Otis Fish, blind clam digger, Falmouth, Mass., Ca.1930

Capt. Otis Fish, blind clam digger , Ca.1930

Capt. Otis Fish, blind clam digger , Ca.1930

Capt. Otis Fish, blind clam digger , Ca.1930

Old lady purchasing walnuts from street vendor, Ca.1930

Capt. Clark, New Bedford whaling captain, Ca.1930

Man with divining rod, Ca.1930

Professor Braganda, crystal gazer, Ca.1930

Cobbler, South Boston, Mass., Ca.1930

Nathan S. Hill, china repairer, 1931

Childrens’ pageant: Jack and Jill, ca.1930

Blacksmith with horseshoes, ca.1930

Old bicycle rider, ca.1930

The New England Homestead, a magazine published in Springfield, Massachusetts from 1842 to 1969, conducted a contest in 1884 to which farmers submitted notebooks recording their farm accounts for the one year period, April 1, 1883 to March 31, 1884.

The collection includes bound and unbound farm accounts submitted as entries to the contest contest. The Library holds The New England Homestead, 1842-1850 on microfilm, and 1894-1968 in bound volumes.

The collection contains posters and broadsides from the Massachusetts towns that were flooded to create the Quabbin Reservoir. Posters advertise the Enfield Fire Department farewell ball, voter registration notice, and plays performed by the North Dana Dramatic Club.

Collection of clippings from Quabbin town newspapers, including Dana, Enfield, Greenwich, Millington, and Prescott. Many clippings chronicle the final days of the towns razed to make way for the reservoir, including the popular series “Letters from Quabbin” published in The Springfield Union in 1938, which recorded the history of the formation of the Quabbin Reservoir from the selection of its location and the plans for its construction to the relocation of houses and neighbors and the disbanding of local organizations and communities.

Annual reports from Quabbin towns Dana, Enfield, Greenwich, and Prescott. These towns were lost during the late 1930s through early 1940s when they were flooded to create the Quabbin Reservoir.

Two girls in carriage, Quabbin region, ca.1910

As one of the main repositories documenting the history of western Massachusetts and New England, the Department of Special Collections and University Archives collects primary materials relating to the political, cultural, economic, and intellectual life of our region, and the lives and experiences of its residents.

Concentrated in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the collections in SCUA touch on many aspects of the history of the region with developing depth in immigration, labor, work, and industry, social change and movements for social change, and literature and the arts. Among the more valuable collections for the political history of the region is the papers of Silvio O. Conte, Republican congressman from the First District of Massachusetts from 1959-1991. A member of the House Appropriations Committee (and its ranking minority member from 1979-1991), Conte is particularly remembered for his work in Health and Human Services, education, and the environment. SCUA also holds collections for state representatives John Haigis and Maurice Donahue, as well as other figures involved in political life in the Commonwealth.

Although the Department holds materials relating to individual communities in western Massachusetts, the history of the Quabbin watershed is a particular focal point. SCUA collects books printed in the Quabbin region and more generally, in rural New England prior to 1900, as well as manuscript, printed, and photographic collections relating to Quabbin towns.

Significant collections

A political scientist, writer, and government consultant, John P. Roche was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., on May 7, 1923, the son of a salesman. A liberal Social Democrat and fervent anti-Communist, Roche spent his academic career at Haverford College and Brandeis and Tufts Universities, writing extensively on American foreign policy, constitutional law, and the history of political thought in America, and maintaining a strong interest in the history of the American left. During the 1960s and early 1970s, he served as an adviser to the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations.

The Roche Collection consists of over 300 publications pertaining to the political left in the United States, with a smaller number of works from the radical right and from European Socialists and Communists. Concentrated in the years spanning the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the McCarthy hearings, many of the works were produced by formal political parties in response to particular political campaigns, current events, or social issues, with other works geared primarily toward consciousness raising and general political education on trade unionism, fascism, war and peace, American foreign policy, and freedom of speech and the press.