Online Primary Sources
Primary Sources are writings by someone who was there. See the web page, Finding Primary Sources, for some how-to on finding primary sources in the catalog.
- Defining Gender: 1450 - 1910Primary docs: diaries, ephemera. Dance cards, business receipts, novels, misc.
"Defining Gender explores the study and analysis of gender, leisure and consumer culture." - Everyday Life and Women in America 1800-1920Another large set of digitized books, this one from Duke and NYPL.
- Gerritsen OnlineDigital compilation of primary source documents, 1543-1945, concerning international women's history and liberation movements.
- Margaret Sanger PapersHer papers "cover every aspect of the birth control movement, including the movement's changing ideologies, its campaign for legitimacy, and its internal conflicts and organizational growth."
- Slavery and Anti-slavery: A Transnational ArchivePamphlets, graphics, laws, newspapers, court records, etc., gathered & searchable electronically.
- Sophia Smith Collection: Women's History Archives at Smith College: Digital CollectionsOnline subset of larger library: oral histories, photographs, biographies... beautifully done website.
- Underground & Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic NovelsThis collection includes complete adult comic books and graphic novels from the 1960s to today "along with interviews, commentary, theory, and criticism from journals, books, and magazines." All of Bloom County! And more!
- Women's Studies Manuscript Collections from the Schlesinger Library: Voting Rights, National Politics, and Reproductive RightsThis collection of primary sources includes documents from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, with a special focus on British foreign policy during the immediate pre and post-World War I period, and post-World War II era.
Web Sites
- American Women Through TimeA detailed chronology.
- Digital Public Library of AmericaMany libraries have shared their digitized collections through DPLA, making them much more easily searchable than through Google. Go here.
- Women of Protest: Photographs from the Records of the National Women's PartyThis Library of Congress collection includes 448 digitized photographs selected from approximately 2,650 print photographs in the Records of the National Woman's Party, a collection of more than 438,000 items, housed in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. The images span from 1875 to 1938 but largely were created in the years between 1913 and 1922. The images depict the tactics used by the militant wing of the suffrage movement in the United States—including picketing, petitioning, pageants, parades and demonstrations, hunger strikes and imprisonment---as well as individual portraits of organization leaders and members.
- Women and Social Movements in the United StatesAbout a sixth of the projects on the subscription platform, "Women and Social Movements" remain freely available; the other projects, in addition to 170,000 pages of primary documents and enhanced searching tools, are available through Alexander Street Press. (We do not own that resource.)
A Really Big Set on Microfilm
Microform is miniaturized documents. They come in many shapes and sizes, but all are kept on the first floor. Do ask for help finding the Microfilm and using the handy reader/scanner/printers.
- History of WomenThis is a set of almost 1,000 reels of microfilm with full text of magazines, diaries, early books, documents, essays, and memoirs. The Guide, Z7965.h577 1983, lists the titles by author, with a brief and inadequate subject index. Thankfully, many titles have their own record in the ALICE catalog. This link goes to a search for " "History of women" and Microfilm"