The Boston Research Center (BRC), based in the Northeastern University Library, is a digital community history lab where Boston’s deep neighborhood and community histories are brought to light through the creation and use of new technology so that residents can share a more nuanced and complex understanding of Boston’s present.

The BRC helps provide a fuller picture of the history of Boston by bringing together historical materials—photos, maps, letters, newspaper articles, recordings, charts and tables, and more—and digitizing them so they can be remixed and re-combined with current data to tell the story of essential but underrepresented groups in Boston’s neighborhoods. The BRC also builds computer and technical systems that will make it easier to safely and permanently house digital history projects, repeat similar projects in the future, and make connections between them as they grow.