Boston Fire Department image collection

The Boston Fire Department is the first paid fire department in the United States, dating back to the 17th century. The City of Boston Archives recently accessioned about 65 cubic feet of photographs and negatives from the Fire Investigation Unit which date back to the 1960s. The collection is in need of physical arrangement and description in our online catalog in preparation for a digitization project. In their current state, the records are not easily accessible by the archivists and therefore not readily available for records requests. Arrangement of the negatives will require a system that establishes both physical and intellectual control over the records. Part of this includes writing metadata for the records which will be included in our collections management system, ArchiveSpace. To begin this project, the intern will work with the archivist to arrange, describe, and rehouse part of the collection.