Women's Collections

Libraries, Archives, and Consciousness

Suzanne Hildenbrand, Suzanne Hildenbrand

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000760057
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Lingue e linguistica
• Subtopic: Scienze dell'informazione e biblioteconomia

This book, first published in 1986, analyses women's collections in institutional and private establishments in the United States. It focuses on the development of the collections as a result of feminist advances in activism and scholarship, and the need for collections to reflect the shift to a necessary woman-centredness in their holdings.

COLLECTIONS

Library of Congress Resources for the Study of Women

Sarah Pritchard

Now estimated at almost 80 million items, the collections of the Library of Congress provide an incomparable wealth of material for the study of women. Books, journals, music, photographs, manuscripts and works in all formats are produced by women, treat the history and status of women, and furnish the general context necessary to an analysis of women’s roles in society. Some previous articles have described certain holdings related to women, notably manuscripts and rare books;¹ however there have been no general surveys. This essay will attempt to demonstrate the breadth of the Library’s resources for women’s studies: print and non-print materials in the general and special collections, exhibits, events, services to special groups, and the place of women as staff and users.

THE INSTITUTION

In 1801, the Congress of the United States decided to establish a central collection of books to aid legislators in their work. According to the shipping invoice from the British supplier, not one of these first 728 volumes was written by a woman nor dealt primarily with the legal or social status of women. However, from this nucleus the Library of Congress grew steadily, and shortly before it was destroyed by fire in the War of 1812, the Library included Mercy Otis Warren’s history of the American Revolution, essays by Madame de Stael and Ann Radcliffe, dramatic works by Elizabeth Inchbald and Stephanie de Saint-Aubin, and several titles edited or translated by women. The Library was rebuilt in 1815 with the purchase of Thomas Jefferson’s personal book collection, establishing the broad intellectual scope of the institution and increasing the holding of women’s literary works.

The history of the Library of Congress (LC) as an institution involves not only books, but people. Women have been active in many roles: as librarians, as patrons, and as library users. It seems that women have been using the Library for study since its early years; members of the public were admitted at the discretion of the Librarian, and Congressmen and Senators introduced their family and friends. By 1835, local society papers carried sarcastic observations on the use of the Library as “a sort of public boudoir, for belles and their favorites.”² There is also evidence for more serious use of the Library by learned women; Harriet Martineau’s 1838 writings on her American travels describe her visit to the Library.

The staff of the Library was fairly small until the opening of the Library’s own building in 1897. Early personnel records have not been completely analyzed, but by 1896 the staff numbered 42 including at least two women. The following year, of 66 new positions granted, 26 were filled by women and ten more women were appointed in 1898. Details about some women appear in the 1910 annual report of the Librarian of Congress; of 359 staff members, 149 were women. Most were clustered in processing and copyright functions, a few in managerial and specialist positions. Many women catalogers had prior library training, notably from Melvil Dewey’s New York State Library School. Anna Kelton was a professional librarian who worked at LC from 1900 to 1910 and became Chief of the Index Division of the Copyright Office. She left the Library after her marriage and, as Anna Kelton Wiley, became prominent as a suffragist, member of the National Woman’s Party and the National Council of Women, and activist in many social and political groups. Her papers, as well as the historical archives of the Library, are housed in the Manuscript Division. The current status of women staff at LC is monitored by the Women’s Program Office, discussed later in this paper.

The Library’s public programs in music and poetry are almost entirely a result of the generosity of women, notably Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, Gertrude Clarke Whittal, Katie Loucheim, and Leonora McKim. Recent annual reports show seventy per cent of the $5.5 million held in trust with the U.S. Treasury donated by women; $3.3 million alone from Mrs. Whittall and Mrs. Coolidge. Large gifts have been made by Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, and other women.

BOOKS AND PRINTED DOCUMENTS

It is hard to know how best to proceed through the holdings of the Library. Administratively, some divisions work on a particular subject, others work with particular formats or languages, still others provide service to particular groups. Books and printed documents are, of course, found in every room but will be examined here in five groupings: the general collections, including the main stacks, government documents, and serials; the Rare Book and Special Collections Division; resources in children’s literature; the Area Studies divisions (European, Asian, Hispanic, African and Middle Eastern); and the Law Library.

1. The General Collections

This enormous base of books, journals, and documents in all subjects and languages supports the bulk of day-to-day research at LC. The number of bound volumes is fast approaching 20 million; since works relevant to women’s studies are found in every classification from A to Z, it is impossible to estimate their number as a separate category. Catalogs from second-hand and antiquarian book dealers rarely list books not already in the collection in some form. A sampling includes: hundreds of collective biographies; long runs of reports from such organizations as the National Council of Women, the Association for the Advancement of Women, and the various Female Anti-Slavery Societies; many accounts of travels and war experiences; 19th century religious tracts on the role of women. Again, the holdings of literature by women authors, academic and popular works about women, and supporting social, historical, and technical documentation in all languages are immeasurable. The reference collection in the Main Reading Room has over 350 works devoted to aspects of women’s studies, and similar reference books are located in the Library’s twenty other reading rooms.

Through its exchange and depository programs, the Library has extensive holdings of U.S. and foreign government publications, and those of international organizations like the United Nations. As with other materials, these are integrated in the general stacks, so works related to the status of women are not set apart; however, the documents contain a wealth of demographic and economic data concerning women. Covering all countries and dates, the newspaper collection is a highly-used source of contemporary accounts of in dividual women and of occurrences important to women’s history, but comparatively few of the 33,000 titles are indexed. The collection of serials includes reports from women’s societies, obscure 19th century literary periodicals, modern scholarly and political journals, conference proceedings, foreign language serials, and pieces from ephemeral organizations. Some are held only in microform, but a large number are still in bound volumes.

2. The Rare Book and Special Collections Division

Where the general collections represent an all-encompassing mass of knowledge for women’s studies, the “special collections” by definition are usually segmented by language, subject, format, donor, or other category. Significant “named” collections have been described in Annette Melville’s 464-page guide, Special Collections in the Library of Congress (Washington, 1980). The Rare Book and Special Collections Division has custody of the Library’s most precious books and has the largest collection of incunabula in the Western hemisphere.

Among the personal libraries housed in that division (for example those of Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Jefferson, and Harry Houdini), the library of Susan B. Anthony ranks as one of the most interesting, not only for the history of the suffrage movement, but also for the social and intellectual history of the second half of the 19th century. The 400 volumes were boxed and donated to the Library by Anthony herself in 1903. The books themselves are not particularly rare but have become so because of the care with which Anthony annotated them in preparation for their deposit at the “Congressional Library.” In her 1792 American edition of Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women, Anthony wrote:

Presented to the Library of Congress by a great admirer of this earliest work for woman’s right to equality of rights ever penned by a woman. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said “A wholesome discontent is the first step towards progress,” and here in 1892 [sic], we have the first step—so thinks

Susan B. Anthony
Rochester, NY

Jan. 1904

Anthony’s library includes works by the most noted American authors of the 19th century and documents the often conflicting aims of suffrage, abolitionist, and other reform movements. Even more indicative of her life and philosophy are the thirty-three scrapbooks in which she methodically pasted newspaper clippings, flyers, programs, and the like. Following Susan B. Anthony’s example, suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt donated in 1938 what she called her “feminist library,” in the name of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. The library was the official book collection of the NAWSA and includes gifts from Anthony, Julia Ward Howe, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, and others active in the suffrage movement. Among the 912 items also are scrapbooks kept by Catt and the NAWSA. The papers of Catt, Anthony, and the NAWSA are held in the Manuscript Division.

Within the Rare Book Division are several other collections which, although not explicitly related to women, provide rich insight into the social and cultural life of women. The history of taste and the relationship of women to food preparation and household technology can be examined through the Katherine Bitting gastronomical collection. Vast amounts of popular literature are represented by collections of dime novels, pulp fiction, and playbills, which include both works written by women and those which exemplify social roles and images of women. The division’s collections in spiritualism, the occult, and the Shakers support research in the area of women and religion.

The overriding strength of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division is in American history. The resources needed to study the history of American women are found throughout the comprehensive holdings in colonial and early American imprints, almanacs, and broadsides; the Confederate States Collection; the Wagner-Camp collection of western Americana, and several collections of anarchist, extremist, and radical movement literature. In the general stock of rare books are countless first editions by women authors, for example Phillis Wheatley, Margaret Sanger, Mary Edwards Walker, Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary Baker Eddy, and many obscure women writers of the 1850’s.

Women have played a constant role in the history of fine printing and bookbinding. Not only do our colonial imprints demonstrate the work of women printers, but the 20th century fine printing collection has works produced by women like Clare Van Vliet, Carol Blinn, Jane Grabhora, and Natalie D’Arboloff. Artistic bindings by 19th and 20th century women are also in the collection.

3. Children’s Literature

The Library of Congress has the finest juvenile collection in the United States and supports research, cataloging, seminars, and publications in children’s literature. These resources afford many opportunities to study the childhood experiences of girls, their education and recreation, images of girls and women in children’s books, and the work of women authors, illustrators, and editors in this field.

There are 18,000 children’s books in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, stretching from the 18th century to the present. These include “Big Little Books,” pop-up books, and other items of unusual format. The history of the education and socialization of girls is furthered by a wide variety of schoolbooks: a full set of McGuffey readers, Confederate texts, 19th century Hawaiian texts, early Bulgarian schoolbooks, and more. Excellent primary sources in 18th and 19th century didactic literature include advice books, gift and poetry books, and biographies. Supporting these holdings are the vast general collections, with large numbers of books for children acquired through copyright. Novels from the Stratemeyer series and other girls’ adventure and romance series are well-represented, as are popular and scholarly writings reflecting the history of childhood and the particular images with which girls grow up. The Comic Book Collection held in the Serial and Government Publications Division is strongest for the post-1950 period, and includes westerns, super-heroes, and romance comics.

Service to libraries, librarians, publishers and scholars of children’s literature is provided by the Children’s Literature Center of the Library of Congress. The Center’s vertical files and card catalogs pinpoint such areas as “sexism” and “girls,” and direct users to bibliographies on non-sexist book selection and similar topics related to women’s studies. Biographical files aid in locating scarce information on women editors, authors, and illustrators, supplementing the reference collection in the Center’s office. Staff of the Center have worked on exhibits, colloquia, and publications, many of which draw on works by or about women, for example an exhibit commemorating the centennial of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women,³ and a lecture given by author Eleanor Cameron in honor of National Children’s Book Week.⁴

4. Area Studies

Research in a particular language group, geographical area, or socio-political connection is facilitated by the acquisitions, publishing, and reference functions of the four area studies division: African and Middle Eastern, Asian, European, and Hispanic. Because the scope of these divisions cuts across all subjects, essential works for the study of women are found in each.

The African and Middle Eastern Division has custody of all works in Hebraic and Near Eastern Languages and maintains reference collections in those areas and in African studies. The African Section has pamphlet files with materials about women and through its bibliographies of government and international documents has access to much statistical data on women’s health and economic and political status in Africa. Among rare editions in the Hebraic Section are 16th century printings of the Tehinot and other early prayer-books and liturgical works for Jewish women, complementing many other works for studying the traditions of women in Jewish religion and law. The section has works from Jewish women printers, bibliographies on Jewish women and on women in the Kibbutz movement, issues of Lilith, a radical Jewish feminist magazine, and the writings of contemporary Israeli women.

The Near East Section holds a variety of items on women and feminist movements in the Near East. Two significant items are the periodical Fatat al-Sharq [The Young Woman of the East], published in Egypt from 1906 to 1936, and the works of Qasim Amin (1865-1908) who was a prominent voice for the emancipation of women in the Arab world. Poets like Farugh Farrukhzad (1935-1967) and other Persian women writers are well-represented. From Turkey, the section holds writings of Afetinan, a noted woman historian, and Khalide Edib Adivar, a leader in the war of independence, both of whom were collaborators of Ataturk. In 1965 the section made special note of two new bibliographies of books by and about Turkish women.⁵

The countries of southern and eastern Asia are split among three sections in the Asian Division: Chinese and Korean, Japanese, and South Asian. The Ch...