Molly Brown
LightNews LightNews
banner
mollybrrown.bsky.social
Molly Brown
@mollybrrown.bsky.social
1.6K followers 610 following 170 posts
Reference & Outreach Archivist (the ‘grammer behind the curtain for @NU_Archives) | empathy through history | opinions & exclamation points are my own | she/hers
Posts Replies Media Videos
mollybrrown.bsky.social
Folks in the Boston area: save the date for the week of November 3rd through 8th to take in some great events and exhibits highlighting archival labor and autumnal themes in area archives! Register for updates here:
bit.ly/ArchivesCrawl2025
📜
October 1, 2025 at 3:17 PM
mollybrrown.bsky.social
I absolutely love that in today's intro to archives class, where students look at records of neighborhood activism in Boston, a student responded to the reflective question: "who do you not see represented in these records?" with the answer: "rich people!"
October 1, 2025 at 2:34 PM
Reposted by Molly Brown
nu-archives.bsky.social
🎈 Happy birthday Elma Lewis! 🎈

Today marks what would have been Ms. Elma Lewis’s 104th birthday! Take a moment to celebrate the legacy of Ms. Lewis by learning more about her work that impacted arts and artists throughout Boston and beyond. subjectguides.lib.neu.edu/elmalewis
Black woman looks up the the left and smiles, in slight profile. She is wearing a tie-dye dress and is seated at a piano in a baby blue room.
September 15, 2025 at 12:59 PM
Reposted by Molly Brown
nu-archives.bsky.social
Were hard hats in your back to school supplies list? For students in the 1988 “Kids Building Boston” program they were! 50 students from the McKay School in East Boston participated in an educational program following the three year process of building 125 High Street in Boston’s Financial District.
September 4, 2025 at 3:04 PM
Reposted by Molly Brown
crrj.bsky.social
“A nation-wide digital archive will both inform today’s racial redress agenda and significantly expand our knowledge about these atrocities beyond lynching.” - Margaret Burnham, founder of CRRJ.

Read more about CRRJ's ambitious project with @nu-archives.bsky.social

crrj.org/efforts/gath...
Gathering the Red Record: Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive Updates, National Anti-Black Violence Database Discussed | The Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project
CRRJ hosted a first-of-its-kind, two-day conference, July 24-25, at Northeastern University's Snell Library, to unveil updates to the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive, and discuss pathways to creating a...
crrj.org
August 11, 2025 at 2:59 PM
mollybrrown.bsky.social
More discussion on the exciting news from my place of work! I can't wait for these records to be digitized and widely available!
August 5, 2025 at 4:41 PM
Reposted by Molly Brown
willow-branch.bsky.social
Restorative justice is one of the most meaningful applications of archival work; the CRRJ project at Northeastern is an excellent example of that. I am honored to work alongside colleagues who help shape and grow the CRRJ’s Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive.
crrj.bsky.social Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) @crrj.bsky.social · Jul 24
🎉 NOW LIVE! Our Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive v2.0 is now available to search 5,000 new documents, 275 new incidents, across 14 newly added US states and cities.

A huge congratulations to all involved @nusl.bsky.social Northeastern University Library and partners across the country.
July 28, 2025 at 6:55 PM
Reposted by Molly Brown
nearchivists.bsky.social
NEA is thrilled to welcome session proposals for our 2026 Spring Meeting, Resilience and Action in the Archives, on March 19-21, 2026 in Portland, ME! Submit your proposal before July 30, 2025: newenglandarchivists.org/news/13511144
New England Archivists - NEA 2026 Spring Meeting: Call for Proposals
newenglandarchivists.org
June 17, 2025 at 2:18 PM
mollybrrown.bsky.social
Work with me and I will make collection prep for high volume digitization fun
June 12, 2025 at 6:34 PM
mollybrrown.bsky.social
Elma Lewis and the institutions she founded left a profound impact on Black arts in Boston & worldwide. Now, we at @nu-archives.bsky.social received a grant to digitize her records for our project "Black Art and Joy in Boston (and Beyond): Elma Lewis and the National Center of Afro-American Artists"
Library Receives CPA Grant to Digitize “Black Art and Joy in Boston (and Beyond)” – Library News
librarynews.northeastern.edu
June 12, 2025 at 3:39 PM
mollybrrown.bsky.social
Did you know that the MBTA's Orange Line is a Gemini?! On this day (June 10th) in 1901 the Orange Line began service. How I learned this? Jim Vrabel's newly launched Boston history database "When and Where in Boston"! whenandwhereinboston.org
June 10, 2025 at 7:39 PM
mollybrrown.bsky.social
Such a fun peek into the Boston Globe Library Collection at @nu-archives.bsky.social by NU Journalism Prof. Meg Heckman. The Globe's clippings files reveal so much in what is filed and what isn't. I'm grateful for Meg's labor lifting up these women journalists' legacies! www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/...
The Girls from Boston
During the height of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Boston’s daily newspapers employed some of the nation’s best-known film critics, writes Meg Heckman. All of them were women.
www.wbur.org
May 29, 2025 at 8:20 PM
Reposted by Molly Brown
nu-archives.bsky.social
Happy Melnea Cass Day! On May 22, 1966, over 650 community leaders gathered to pay tribute to the “First Lady of Roxbury” Melnea Cass. 52 years later, in 2018, then-Mayor Marty Walsh declared May 22, 2018 "Melnea Cass Day" See more records of Melnea Cass's legacy here: bit.ly/melneacass
Melnea Cass, in black and white, wearing pearls and a brooch, and cat eye glasses looking up to the left smiling subtly with her hair pulled back into a bun in a cowl neck knit dress.
May 22, 2025 at 8:28 PM
mollybrrown.bsky.social
Love to email a collaborator explaining a delay in some scans being sent their way and receiving "No worries it is garden push days" the perfect sort of spring understanding 💐
May 16, 2025 at 7:32 PM
mollybrrown.bsky.social
A more honest boiler plate language special for those with a busy inbox: "Apologies for the delayed response, but you see, I emailed you a most thorough response in my dreams, and have only now awoken to my belated reality"
May 9, 2025 at 6:02 PM
Reposted by Molly Brown
nu-archives.bsky.social
On this day in 1965 thousands were led by Martin Luther King Jr. from Carter Playground to the Boston Common for a Freedom Rally. A poster distributed explaining reasons for the march stated:
“In short we march to protest the lie that New Boston can be built without social justice”
Poster for march with a photograph of Martin luther King Jr. and the following text: "Why we march with Dr. Martin Luther King We march today with Dr. Martin Luther King to protest the sufferings endured by the citizens of Boston. WE MARCH TO CITY HALL To protest the exclusion of the poor from anti -poverty planning. To protest the bad faith of public officials in failing to enforce our housing codes. To protest continued segregation in public housing. In short, we march to protest the lie that a New Boston can be built without social justice. WE MARCH TO THE SCHOOL COMMITTEE To protest poor and racially imbalanced schools, and demand a commitment by the School Committee to a program and timetable to end this educational genocide, beginning September 1965. To call on the citizens of Boston to repudiate the School Committee majority which says: "These Negro parents have no background, they are just a pair of hands. " "We do not have inferior schools; what we have been getting is an inferior type of child." "White parents don't want their children to go to school with backward Negroes." Will YOU Join Us?"
April 23, 2025 at 2:53 PM
Reposted by Molly Brown
nu-archives.bsky.social
This photograph of Theater Offensive founder Abe Rybeck accurately portrays how we're feeling on this sunny spring day watching the flowers begin to bloom in Boston. Good luck to everyone preparing for finals this week!
Theater Offensive founder Abe Rybeck in a brightly colored floral gown with long draping sleeves reaching up to adjust a flower crown atop his head. Abe is outside with brick buildings and businesses behind him while to his sides are more neutrally dressed onlookers in shirts and jeans smiling and laughing and admiring his bright ensemble.
April 14, 2025 at 3:37 PM
mollybrrown.bsky.social
As I tried to wrap up a workshop on using archival records for a day long educator's professional development program and transition to the next session an educator cried out "but how can we leave Molly!!!" and I will now be floating off the ground thanks to that compliment
April 9, 2025 at 7:29 PM
mollybrrown.bsky.social
Happy National Library Workers Day to all my fellow information laborers! It is always a great day to support those who enable equitable access to information and and to demand just systems that adequately fund and support that work as loud as we can!
Woman wearing glasses with a pen in her right hand resting on a notebook that is on a table looking at a microfilm reader with text overlaid on it that reads "libraries work because we do"
April 8, 2025 at 8:58 PM
Reposted by Molly Brown
nu-archives.bsky.social
Happy National Library Week! Here are some photos from July 1986 taken by Janet Knott at the old Dudley Street Library (now the Roxbury Branch of the Boston Public Library). Knott photographed folks browsing the stacks, reading aloud and reading independently.
Woman reading a book on the other side of a bookshelf, head tilted book open, about to turn a page, the books facing the photo on the shelf between the photographer and the reader are related to topics on America. Young boy reading at a low table with leg curled up in next to him. Woman reading a book with an elephant on it titled "animal alphabet" to child whose face is mostly obscured by the book. They are both seated.
April 7, 2025 at 2:00 PM
Reposted by Molly Brown
edrabinski.bsky.social
Congress has the power to restore funding to the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Join me in calling your reps!
amlibraryassoc.bsky.social American Library Association @amlibraryassoc.bsky.social · Apr 3
MORE: Libraries in several states have received letters which claim to cancel federal IMLS grants.

Congress MUST act to restore this funding. Read our full statement: www.ala.org/news/2025/04...

Use your voice - call Congress to protect & restore library funding: bit.ly/CallCongressForLibraries
April 3, 2025 at 8:49 PM
Reposted by Molly Brown
cejacobson.bsky.social
Our copies of THE HOME-MAKER are here! @mollybrrown.bsky.social and I had so much fun unboxing them and seeing our foreword and afterward in the new handsome QLB edition. Out on April 7th!
A baby sits in a Bjorn rocker with a copy of the home-maker resting in her lap Molly and Christine clink pink glasses of sparkling rose behind a table where their boxes of The Home Maker lay unpacked.
March 23, 2025 at 4:29 PM
mollybrrown.bsky.social
There are so many ways to collect anecdotal feedback on archives class sessions for youth: connections made, trust built, etc. A new tier of feedback for me is a student drawing you and at the end showing you along with their full page of notes 🥹 📜
March 15, 2025 at 4:29 PM
Reposted by Molly Brown
dorothyjberry.bsky.social
There is so much bad news on micro and macro levels lately, I will share a little personal win. Here is a sneak peek at a very early dummy of the interior layout for my book "The House Archives Built, and Other Thoughts on Black Archival Possibility," upcoming from @wehere.bsky.social press.
A mock-up of an open book- on one side there is light mint/robin's egg blue background and the text "The House Archives Built, Revisited" with smaller text in a typerwriterish font. On the other side there is a sepia photo from the 1870's of a Black man standing on a porch with his hands on a chair and his legs crossed in a jaunt manner.
March 13, 2025 at 5:54 PM