Chelsea Fernandes will oversee Ferreira Mendes Portuguese American Archives and the Luso Afro Brazilian Archives Collections
/filters:quality(90)/prod01/production-cdn-pxl/media/umassdartmouth/news/2024/ChelseaFernandesHeadshot-1-1200X1144.jpg?text=945+WebP)
The Claire T. Carney Library at UMass Dartmouth recently announced the appointment of Chelsea Fernandes as Librarian Archivist for the Ferreira Mendes Portuguese American Archives and the Luso Afro Brazilian Archives Collections. Fernandes comes to the University with extensive experience managing digital collections and will oversee the digitization efforts of collections within the Archive.
Most recently, Fernandes served as a Digital Services Librarian in charge of the institutional repository at Bridgewater State University, where she recreated several online exhibits that were in danger of being lost. Before moving to New Bedford with her husband, who is from the city, Fernandes earned a master's degree in Archives Management from Simmons University and is pursuing a second master's degree at Boston University in the School of Theology. She is interested in the transmission of information in the ancient world, when cultures began to shift from oral to written traditions, and how this technology changed religious practices.
National in scope, the Ferreira Mendes Portuguese American Archives contain documents of Portuguese-American individuals and organizations. Its holdings include newspapers, books, recordings, family photographs, scrapbooks, business records, and correspondence documenting social history, illustrating the collective experience of immigration, settlement, and life in the United States. The primary goal of the Archives is to preserve and make these rich and growing resources easily accessible to anyone interested in Portuguese-American history and culture. The Archives and Special Collections staff are working on an initiative to ensure the long-term preservation of its growing collections of digitized and born-digital records using the Preservica platform.
The Ferreira-Mendes Portuguese-American Archives is named for pioneer Portuguese-language radio and newspaper personality Affonso Gil Mendes Ferreira. It houses the largest collection of historical material documenting the experience of Portuguese immigrants and their descendants in the United States. The Luso-Afro-Brazilian Archives includes collections documenting the region's Cape Verdean and Brazilian American population. The most significant collection is the records of the Brazilian American Cultural Institute.