September 2008

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 would like to submit an announcement that you feel would be of interest to our readers, please contact Tanya Zanish-Belcher at tzanish iastate.edu .

A number of articles relating to women s archives has recently been published in Library Trends and are available online through BNET at http://www.bnet.com/?tag header;logo

Mason, Kären and Tanya Zanish-Belcher. Raising the archival consciousness: how women's archives challenge traditional approaches to collecting and use, or, what's in a name? Library Trends (Fall 2007)

Abstract: This article examines archival collecting, taking as case studies two women's archives. Drawing on their experiences building the collections of the Archives of Women in Science and Engineering (Iowa State University) and the Iowa Women's Archives (University of Iowa), the authors explore how such efforts challenge traditional approaches to collecting. Proactive collecting, such as oral history projects focused on Latinas or women scientists, helps fill gaps in the historical record by encouraging people who have not traditionally been donors to participate in building and using diverse archival collections.

Sachs, Honor R. Reconstructing a life: the archival challenges of women's history. Library Trends (Winter 2008)

Abstract: The field of women's history emerged and developed through the joint efforts of scholars, librarians, and archivists. When the field emerged in the early 1970s, the combined labor of individuals in these academic disciplines unearthed otherwise obscure archival evidence, shaped a new framework for research, and fueled dynamic inquiry into the historic experiences and modern understandings of women's lives. Despite such collaborative origins, historians do not always incorporate a broad understanding of library and archive practice into their scholarship. By illustrating efforts to reconstruct the life of one eighteenth-century woman on the Kentucky frontier, this essay illustrates how knowledge of archival collection and provenance provides vital perspective on historical experience. Given the long tradition of collaboration between librarians, archivists, and women's historians, this essay suggests that renewed attention to such relationships will provide important new opportunities for future research.

Schlesinger Library (Cambridge, MA)
http://www.radcliffe.edu/schlesinger_library.aspx

The Schlesinger Library is sponsoring a new exhibit, Women of Spirit: Religion, Voice, and Social Justice, which will be open through October 2, 2008. As noted in their exhibit description, The women featured in this exhibit have sacrificed much and gained much in their search for authority and power in the realm of religion. A collection of correspondence, sermons, photographs, pamphlets, and published material with topics such as suffrage, anti-poverty work, peace advocacy, and human rights will be on display.