American Women's History Digital Library

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African American Women Writers of the 19th Century
A Selection of Published Works
"...a digital collection of some 52 published works by 19th-century black women writers. A part of the Digital Schomburg, this collection provides access to the thought, perspectives and creative abilities of black women as captured in books and pamphlets published prior to 1920."
New York Public Library Digital Library Collections

American Women
A Gateway to Library of Congress Resources for the Study of Women's History and Culture in the United States
"The site contains a slightly expanded and fully searchable version of the print publication American Women: A Library of Congress Guide for the Study of Women's History and Culture in the United States (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 2001)."
Sections include: General Collections ; Serial & Government Publications ; Law Library ; Rare Books & Special Collections ; Manuscripts ; Prints & Photographs ; Geography and Maps ; Music ; Recorded Sound ; Moving Images ; American Folklife Center ; Area Studies ; Collections ; Topical Essays.
- American Memory, Library of Congress

American Women's History: A Research Guide
"...provides citations to print and Internet reference sources, as well as to selected large primary source collections. The guide also provides information about the tools researchers can use to find additional books, articles, dissertations, and primary sources."
By Ken Middleton, Reference Librarian, Middle Tennessee State University

Ann Arbor: A Women's Town, 1900-1975
"The city of Ann Arbor has a very colorful history, and some of the best storytellers in Ann Arbor are the African American women interviewed by Lola Jones and her daughter Carole Gibson. Their organization, called Another Ann Arbor, Inc., produced two documentary films from the interviews. 'Ann Arbor: A Woman's Town' covers the first half of the twentieth century. The second film, 'A Change Was in the Air' chronicles the tumultuous Civil Rights Era in Ann Arbor, from the 1950s-1975...This web site is a collection of clips from the two documentaries. In these clips, you'll meet several women who not only tell the story of Ann Arbor, but were actually part of the history."
- CHICO, University of Michigan School of Information

Attending to Early Modern Women
"This gateway provides links to World Wide Web resources useful for the study of women in early modern Europe and the Americas. It focuses on the period ca. 1500 to ca. 1800 but also includes some medieval and nineteenth-century resources...Materials range from bibliographic databases to full-text resources, images, and sound recordings."
Arts and Humanities Team, University of Maryland Libraries

Chicanas Speak Out! - (dead link)
Women: New Voice of La Raza
By Merta Vidal, 1971

Cornell University Library - Windows on the Past
"...is a grouping of selected historical materials which have been digitally scanned and are available for on-line browsing and searching."
Sections include: Historic Monographs Collection ; Historic Math Book Collection ; New York State Historical Literature ; International Women's Periodicals [restricted to Cornell University community] ; Ezra Cornell Papers ; Witchcraft Collection ; NEH Agriculture Collection ; Other Digital Collections.

Daguerreotype Portraits and Views, 1839-1744
America's First Look into the Camera
"...consists of approximately 600 photographs [about 65 of women] dating from 1839 to 1744. Portrait daguerreotypes produced by the Mathew Brady studio make up the major portion of the collection. The collection also includes early architectural views by John Plumbe, a few outdoor scenes, and copies of painted portraits."

Documents from the Women's Liberation Movement
An On-line Archival Collection
Special Collections Library, Duke University
"...document various aspects of the Women's Liberation Movement in the United States, and focus specifically on the radical origins of this movement during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Items range from radical theoretical writings to humourous plays to the minutes of an actual grassroots group."
Compiled by Ginny Daley, Women's Studies Archivist and Bibliographer

The Emma Goldman Papers
Part of the UC Berkeley / SunSITE Digital Library

Early Illinois Women - (dead link)
"This web site attempts to capture the experiences of Illinois women during the first century of statehood. The site includes a digital archive of original material from participating libraries and links to existing Internet material."

Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta - Working Papers - (dead link)

  • "Does Science Discriminate against Women? Evidence from Academia, 1973-97" - (dead link)
    By Donna K. Ginther, February 2001.

The Feminist Chronicles, 1953-1993

Five College Archives Digital Access Project
"This web site provides access to digitized versions of archival records and manuscript collections relating primarily to women's history -- particularly women's education at the Five Colleges."
Amherst, Hamphire, Mt. Holyoke, Smith, U. Mass
Maintained by Peter Nelson

Florida Memory Project

From the Back Alleys to the Supreme Court & Beyond
A five-segment audio history of abortion rights in the United States.
History Dept., University at Albany, SUNY

Harvard Business School Baker Library - (dead link)

  • Baker Library Historical Collections - (dead link)
    • Unheard Voices: American Women in the Emerging Industrial and Business Age - (dead link)
      "A Survey of the Baker Manuscript Collections for the Role of Women in Business, 1700-1920."
      "The online guide that follows is the first of these research tools to be available to scholars, providing both information on the materials that were identified within the manuscript collections, as well as a bibliography of secondary resources."

Harvard University - Open Collections Program

  • Women Working, 1800-1930
    "...focuses on women's role in the United States economy and provides access to digitized historical, manuscript, and image resources selected from Harvard University's library and museum collections. The collection features approximately 500,000 digitized pages and images..."

Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum

  • American Women! - (dead link)
    A Celebration of Our History
    "A fascinating array of female personalities have shaped our American experience, 106 of whom are featured in our exhibit. Our opening gallery showcases unforgettable women who represent many qualities worthy of our appreciation. Then journey through time as women's struggles and progress from colonial times to the present are told through historical narratives and short biographies."

Kathrine La Sheck, 1891-1971
"On-line exhibit featuring images of Katharine La Sheck, an entertainer who performed with the Ideal Quartet, The College Girls (1911-1915), and the Marigold Quartet (1915-1920). Booked by the Redpath Chautauqua, they performed widely on the Chautauqua circuit and were enthusiastically received. The exhibit includes a biography, scope and content note, and a container list for her collection of papers.
From the Iowa Women's Archives, University of Iowa Libraries

See American Literature: Toni Morrison

Marquette University Libraries - University Archives Photo Exhibits

  • Dorothy Day
    "The Staten Island Years, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement is captured in candid photographs and letters from the 1920s."
  • Kateri, Our Sister
    "Christianity among the Indians of the Americas is exemplified in the religious lifestyle of Kateri Tekakwitha, a Mohawk Indian woman now regarded as a saint by her followers. Her importance to Native American Catholics, past and present, is illustrated with photographs and quotations from interviews."
  • St. Katharine Drexel
    "...(1858-1955) is the second American-born Catholic declared a saint (October 2, 2000). As presented here, her generosity touched the lives of thousands of African Americans and American Indians through numerous Catholic institutions across the United States."

Marriage, Women, and the Law, 1815-1914
Studies in Scarlet
"This unique digital collection is the result of a coordinated, transnational project, "Studies in Scarlet," sponsored by the Research Libraries Group (RLG). With a focus on family law and domestic relations in the 19th century, the collection provides scholars throughout the world with electronic access to materials supporting research on a broad range of topics, including marriage, divorce, adultery, miscegenation, polygamy, and birth control. The content of the collection, gleaned from case reports, statutes, novels, newspapers, diaries, and letters, is designed to support scholarship in disciplines including law, history, sociology, political science, women's studies, and criminology."
RLG Digital Collections Project

Mary Baker Eddy Institute
Founder of Christian Science.
Includes full-text of the most important of Mary Baker Eddy's writings:

Massachusetts Historical Society

  • Adams Papers - (dead link)
    "The papers comprise over a quarter million manuscript pages of the letters and diaries of generations of Adams husbands, wives, and children including John Adams (1735-1826) and Abigail Adams (1744-1818), John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) and Louisa Catherine Adams (1775-1852), and Charles Francis Adams (1807-1874) and Abigail Brooks Adams (1808-1889)...The papers cover every major political development from the 1750s to the 1880s."

Museum of the City of San Francisco

National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection, 1848-1921
"The NAWSA Collection consists of 167 books, pamphlets and other artifacts documenting the suffrage campaign."
American Memory Project, Library of Congress

Not For Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony
A Film by Ken Burns and Paul Banes
PBS Online multimedia Website to accompany the film - includes essays and historical documents.

A Perennial Blessing : Celebrating Sophia Smith
"This exhibit documents what is known today about Sophia Smith -- her life, her times and her continuing legacy -- based on contemporary sources and original materials in the archival collections at Smith College."

Roe v. Wade in a Nutshell - An Edited Text
"Six Justices wrote opinions for Roe v. Wade. Altogether they verge on eighty pages in length. Here are the six opinions edited for brevity..."
From the Abortion Law page.
See also Academic Info: Women & the Law

Travels for Reform: The Early Work of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1852-1741 - (dead link) Stanton and Anthony Mini-Edition
"Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) led the movement for women's rights in the nineteenth century. The documents in this mini-edition focus on the first decade of their collaboration, from 1852 until 1741, when they honed their skills as reformers in New York State. These primary historical sources are pertinent to the study of women, American politics, New York State, and antebellum reform movements."

Unpacking on the Prairie: Jewish Women in the Upper Midwest
"This site explores Jewish womenís experiences in unpacking, rearranging, and remodeling their heritage in the Upper Midwest. It also relates how their female descendants redefined that legacy in order to create a more egalitarian community...Learn about Jewish women and the things that they carried, preserved, and changed in the new place they came to call home."
Sections include: The Journey ; Life Inside the Jewish Home ; Life Outside the Jewish Home.
- From the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest

VOAHA: The Virtual Oral/Aural History Archive
California State University, Long Beach
"This site provides access to the full audio recordings of oral histories that have been deposited in Special Collections of the University Library - enabling you, the user, to hear the voice, pitch, and rhythm of the narrations as well as the emotions these convey. You will hear the actual spoken words of oral history narrators, rather than seeing a written version of them in the form of a transcript...Presently, more than three hundred hours of Los Angeles basin oral histories in women's, labor history and Long Beach area history are available online, including forty hours of interviews with California women who were rank and file activists in the national suffrage movement."

Votes for Women: 1850-1920
Part of the Library Congress' American Memory Project
"This selection of 38 pictures includes portraits of many individuals who have been frequently requested from the holdings of the Prints and Photographs Division and the Manuscript Division. Also featured are photographs of suffrage parades, picketing suffragists, and an anti-suffrage display, as well as cartoons commenting on the movement."

Wisconsin Historical Society

  • Wisconsin Historical Images
    "...provides a rich pictorial view of Wisconsin and United States history. Our collection consists of 19th and 20th century photographs, paintings, posters, advertising material, ephemera, and political cartoons. Our images online represent only a fraction of the 3 million images in the Archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society."
    • Wisconsin Women
      "Family photographers, professional photographers and photojournalists have all contributed to the collection. Their images capture women working on the farm and in the city, participating in wartime activities and protest movements, caring for families and working in factories."

Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1830-1930
"This website is intended to introduce students to a rich collection of primary documents related to women and social movements in the United States between 1830 and 1930. It is organized around editorial projects completed by undergraduate and graduate students at the State University of New York at Binghamton."

Women Artists of the American West: Past & Present
"An Internet Course and Interdisciplinary Resource featuring the vital contributions that women have made to the art and history of the American west."
"...features the vital contributions that women have made to the art and history of the American west. The site is designed as an interdisciplinary resource and a distance learning course ... The WAAW Internet archive currently contains 17 collections, arranged according to four themes: community, identity, spirituality and locality. Each collection is comprised of illustrated essays, most of which have been written specifically for WAAW by recognized art historians, curators and artists."

Women in American History - (dead link)
By Encyclopedia Britannica
Sections include: Early America ; The Nineteenth Century ; At the Crossroads ; Modern America ; Articles ; Media Gallery ; In Her Own Words ; Women's History on the Web ; Recommended Reading ; Study Guide.

Worchester Women's History Project
"...raise awareness of the history of women in the Worcester area and to create national recognition of the role the Worcester area has played in the history of the women's rights movement."
Includes online material related to the 1850 & 1851 Conventions

Discussion Lists

H-Women Discussion Network
"H-Women is free and open to everyone with a mature and abiding interest in the history of women, especially scholars, teachers and librarians."

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