Community Projects

Chinatown Community Collections

In the summer of 2020, the Boston Research Center (BRC) held meetings with organizational partners based in Chinatown, including: Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, Pao Arts Center, Chinese Historical Society of New England, the Chinatown Community Land Trust, the Chinatown Branch of the Boston Public Library, the Friends of the Chinatown Library, researcher and author Dr. Michael Liu. Partners cited concerns that neighborhood historical materials are scattered throughout the city, some accessible, many more hidden. They further advised us that community members looking to learn more about their neighborhood history would benefit from a publicly accessible database of collections.
The BRC worked with our community advisors to develop a collections survey, which has been made available in simplified and traditional Chinese script, as well as in English.

Using the survey responses, we created a directory of collections that can be found at https://chinatowncollections.library.northeastern.edu/

2019 Asian American Student Center Exhibit

On January 28, 2019, Northeastern’s Asian American Center opened an exhibit that was the result of a collaboration between two student-leaders running Northeastern’s Asian American Heritage Month, Melanie Barbini and Roshni Thyagrajan and the Archives and Special Collections. Melanie and Roshni collaborated to create an exhibit that represented Asian-American activism in Boston using the Chinese Progressive Associations (CPA) Records. View the exhibit

https://asianamericanhistory.library.northeastern.edu/2019-asian-american-student-center-exhibit/