BC's Burns Library has a lot of archival material relating to diverse aspects of history, especially of BC, Boston, Catholicism, and Ireland and Irish immigrants to the Americas. To learn more about its collections or if you'd like to talk to a Burns staff member about special collections and/or archival materials to support your research, then please contact the staff at 617-552-4861 or submit a question.
Library Hours
The Burns Library's entrance is on the side of the Bapst building facing Boston College's main gate on Commonwealth Avenue. Look at this Boston College Chestnut Hill campus map for more detailed information.
Archives & Manuscripts is the department at the Burns Library that manages primary source material.
Archives and manuscripts are words that describe the kinds of primary sources we manage.
Archives can be a general term pertaining to all materials with enduring value created by individuals (papers) or organizations (records) during the course of everyday affairs OR the repository that holds that kind of material (the Burns Library). However, at Boston College, we primarily use the term archives to mean the University Archives, which are the office records of Boston College, but it also applies to any collection of organizational records.
While the term manuscripts can be limited to hand-written documents, at Boston College, we generally use it more broadly and apply it to all collections of personal papers.
