Sara Goldberg, Archival consultant
Mount Auburn Archives volunteer, intern, consultant
Newton, MA
PHOTO By meg winslow
I’ ve been amazed at the dedication and passion that the staff and volunteers in all of the departments bring to their work and at the“ beehive” of activity that occurs every day at the Cemetery. In the Historical Collections department, we have staff and visitors coming in and out, looking for information; researchers who are local and from farther away; as well as colleagues from other historic institutions.
And I’ ve been astonished at the amount of information and the social history that can be gleaned from the Cemetery’ s records. It just wasn’ t something that had crossed my mind before I came to Mount Auburn, and in talking to other students at Simmons, it was clear they had never considered cemetery records as an area of study either. Now, thanks to Brian Sullivan’ s tours and my speaking in class, there is a lot of interest at Simmons in being an intern in Mount Auburn.
Sara Goldberg( center) records the oral history of visitors at Mount Auburn Cemetery’ s May 2009 Open House.
came to the Historical Collections Department and
I Archives at Mount Auburn in September 2008, first as a volunteer, then as an intern, through the Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science Archives Management concentration. I received my MLS this year( 2009). I completed a 60-hour internship at Mount Auburn, working on the lot correspondence project with Historical Collections Curator Meg Winslow and Archivist Brian Sullivan. We identified historic documents that were at risk because of their fragility and their materials, such as acidic paper. Many of these documents are over 150 years old, and my job was to make them stable and safe to ensure their long-term preservation. Without this type of care, documents on acidic paper will gradually crumble and damage other documents around them. Having completed my internship, I am now working as a consultant with Mount Auburn’ s Historical Collections, continuing on the historic lot correspondence project.
The Mount Auburn collection is really unique because of its breadth, continuity, and the fact that it’ s still being used. The Cemetery Services staff accesses the historic correspondence for information about deeds, who owns particular lots, who can legally be buried in certain lots, and the genealogical charts related to all of these issues. When documents end up in most archives, they are not being consulted by people on a daily basis, but here at Mount Auburn they are.
Nathan Fried-Lipski, Photographer Boston
Nathan Fried-Lipski is a photographer and birder who finds subject matter and aesthetic inspiration at Mount Auburn. He thrives on capturing action— of the Boston Celtics shooting a free-throw, the Boston Bruins scoring a goal, or birds in flight at Mount Auburn.
I
’ ve been photographing birds at Mount Auburn for about two years. Before that, I would go on Boston birding websites to see where birders were going. I kept noticing lots of listings for Mount Auburn, so I sort of ventured over there and really enjoyed it.
I like photographing action – anything that’ s moving and hard to capture. Most of my birding photographs are of birds in motion, in flight. I like the raptors at Mount Auburn, the birds with a big wingspan, like hawks. And the herons are a lot of fun. I enjoy photographing herons while they eat, seeing what they catch.
Mount Auburn is one of the only places in the city where I’ ve seen owls, which I really like to photograph. There were a couple of great horned owls over on Ivy Path, above Consecration Dell.
Great-blue Heron at Mount Auburn by Nathan Fried-Lipski
Grayce McCreary
6 | Sweet Auburn