June 2007

News from the Archives provides readers with news concerning U.S. Women's History from archives and repositories with collections and projects of interest. If you are affiliated with an archive or repository and have an announcement that you feel would be of interest to our readers, please contact Tanya Zanish-Belcher at tzanish iastate.edu .

Purdue University (Lafayette, Indiana)

Purdue has announced a 1 million gift to establish Purdue's first archives documenting the lives and accomplishments of the university's women. The Susan Bulkeley Butler Women's Archives will provide resources visitors can use to learn about Purdue history and the key roles women faculty and alumnae have played in the university's growth. It also will be a site for seminars and exhibits in its Stewart Center location.

The archives will include an oral history program featuring recorded interviews with key women leaders, an acquisition program to gain important materials through donations and purchases and a lecture series focused on women leaders at Purdue. The archives also will provide grants for researchers from around the country to come to Purdue to use the archives and provide support for a staff member specializing in women's studies to work in the archives.

Purdue Libraries Archives and Special Collections is already home to individual collections on women such as aviator Amelia Earhart and professor Lillian Gilbreth, the real-life "Cheaper by the Dozen" matriarch who, with her husband Frank, pioneered the field of motion studies. Purdue Libraries leaders say that the new archives will attract collections of memorabilia of prominent Purdue women, including the papers of astronauts, writers, business and government leaders, deans and scientists.

Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting, 2007 (Chicago, Illinois)

The annual meeting will feature several events of interest for anyone interested in women's collections. The Women's Collections Round Table (WCRT) will host a joint reception from 6-8 with the Women Archivists' Round Table on Wednesday, August 29, 2007. The meeting will be held at Loyola University's Gannon Center for Women and Leadership, followed by a joint program and reception with the Women Archivists' Roundtable, featuring feminist leaders in the profession, Andrea Hinding and Ann Campbell

There will also be a session, "Fundamental Change: Three Early SAA Feminist Leaders Reflect on the Profession's Past and Present Challenges," on Friday, August 31 from 4:30-6:00. The speakers include Andrea Hinding, principal editor for Women's History Sources: A Guide to Archives and Manuscript Collections in the United States (1979).For more information about attending the annual meeting, please see: http://www.archivists.org/conference/chicago2007/index.asp

University of Nevada-Las Vegas (Las Vegas, Nevada)
UNLV Libraries Special Collections and Web & Digitization Services have launched their latest digital project -- "Showgirls." (http://www.library.unlv.edu/showgirls) Drawing on the Libraries' unique collections of costume design drawings, illustrations, and photographs, this digital theatrical collection documents the history of the Las Vegas show and its producers from the nightclub dance lines in the modest showrooms of the early hotels to the high-tech amphitheaters of today's Strip.With text by Peter Michel, Director of Special Collections, the "Showgirls" digital collection provides a visual history of a unique genre of entertainment and theatrical production defined by Las Vegas. Among its hundreds of images, it features unique drawings and photographs from Donn Arden, producer of Lido de Paris and Jubilee!, and from the Sands Hotel collection, rare photos of a young Frank Sinatra rehearsing with the famous Copa Girls in a Las Vegas revival of the original Ziegfeld Follies.

Su Kim Chung
Manuscripts Librarian
Special Collections
UNLV Libraries
University of Nevada Las Vegas
4505 S Maryland Pkwy
Box 457010
Las Vegas NV 89154-7010
Ph: 702-895-2241
Fax: 702-895-2253
Email: sukim.chung unlv.edu