Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies: Historical Text Collections

This list of full text historical databases includes digitized books, manuscripts, journal content, and archives (often in the same database).  Often content spans centuries so titles are listed in alphabetical order.

• American Consumer Culture: Market Research & American Business, 1935-1965

  This link opens in a new windIncludes early marketing studies for oral contraceptives.

• Archives of Sexuality & Gender
  Comprises more than 100 collections of digitized records and archives: 
  • Parts 1 & 2 document activism since LGBT activism and culture since 1940: including the Mattachine Society (1951-1976), Gay Activists Alliance (1970-1983), Lesbian Herstory Archive, Hall Carpenter Archives, National Commission on Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (1983-1994), ACT UP, Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender Historical Society (1955-1984), several broad collections of popular, activist and scholarly journals. 
  • Part 3, Sex & Sexuality 16th-20th century, and Part 4, L'Enfer de la Bibliothèque nationale de France document sexology and erotica from the Kinsey Institute, the British Library Private Case collection and the New York Academy of Medicine, and the Bibliotheque National. 
  • Part 5 adds international collections from South Africa and Australia. 
  • Part 6 Community and Identity in North America focuses on personal papers.
     
• British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries, from 1500-1900
  Full text searchable database with additional indexing (geographic, marital status, life events, etc.). 
   
• Defining Gender, 1450-1910 
  "Ephemera, pamphlets, college records and exam papers, commonplace books, diaries, periodicals, letters, ledgers, account books, educational practice and pedagogy, government papers from the Home Office and Metropolitan police, illustrated writings on anatomy, midwifery, art and fashion, manuscript journals, poetry, novels, ballads, drama, receipt books, literary manuscripts, travel writing, and conduct and advice literature."
   
• Digital Transgender Archive
  The purpose of the Digital Transgender Archive (DTA) is to increase the accessibility of transgender history by providing an online hub for digitized historical materials, born-digital materials, and information on archival holdings throughout the world. Based in Worcester, Massachusetts at the College of the Holy Cross, the DTA is an international collaboration among more than twenty colleges, universities, nonprofit organizations, and private collections. 
   
• Everyday Life & Women in America, c.1820-1900
  "The collection is especially rich in conduct of life and domestic management literature, offering vivid insights into the daily lives of women and men, as well as emphasizing contrasts in regional, urban and rural cultures."
   
• Gender: Identity and Social Change

  Includes primary sources for the study of gender history, women’s suffrage, the feminist movement and the men’s movement.  Highlights include:

  • Papers of A. J. Munby, including the letters, diaries, photographs, and poetry of Munby and his wife Hannah Cullwick.
  • Papers of Betty Friedan, and other collections from Harvard's Schlesinger Library
  • Men's studies collections from the University of Michigan
  • Suffrage collections from the University of Manchester
  • full list of collections
     

• Gerritsen Collection: Women's History Online, 1543-1945This link opens in a new
  Covers years 1543-1945, bulk is 1880-1920. The collection is especially rich in women's journals, scholarly medical and sociological studies, and housekeeping and advice manuals. The journals of the suffrage era are a particular strength.

• History Vault: Women's Studies Collections

  • Struggle for Women's Rights, Organizational Records, 1880-1990
    Includes National Woman's Party Papers, Papers of the League of Women Voters, and the Women's Action Alliance.

  • Women's Studies Manuscript Collections from the Schlesinger Library: Voting Rights, National Politics, and Reproductive Rights
    • Woman's Suffrage: Series 1: Part A: National Leaders, Part B: New York, Part C: The South, Part D: New England;
      Part E: the Midwest and Far West.
    • Series 2: Women in National Politics, Part A: Democrats, Part B: Republicans, Jeanne Rankin, Jessica Weiss
    • Series 3: Sexuality, Sex Education, and Reproductive Rights, Part A: Family Planning Oral History Project,
      Part B: Papers of Mary Ware Dennett and the Voluntary Parenthood League.
    • Women's Studies Records of the Bureau of Vocational Information, 1908-1932.
  • Women at Work during World War II: Rosie the Riveter and the Women's Army Corps
    Contains two major sets of records documenting the experience of American women during World War II: Records of the Women's Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor, and Correspondence of the Director of the Women's Army Corps. Primary sources document a wide range of issues pertinent to women during this time of turbulent change, including studies on the treatment of women by unions in several Midwestern industrial centers, and the influx of women to industrial centers during the war. Topics covered in records and correspondence include women's work in war industries, pivotal issues like equal pay, childcare and race, and extensive documentation on the women who joined and served in the Women's Army Corps as WACs.
  • Margaret Sanger Papers

• Home Economics Archive: Research, Tradition and History (HEARTH)
  HEARTH is a core electronic collection of books and journals in Home Economics and related disciplines published between 1850 and 1950.

• Independent Voices
  "Independent Voices chronicles the transformative decades of the 60s, 70s and 80s through the lens of an independent alternative press. Consolidated for the first time, Independent Voices provides over 1,000 titles from the special collections of dozens of libraries. Independent Voices provides easy access to the powerful voices of feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Latinos, gays, lesbians and more."

• LGBT Thought and Culture"LGBT Thought and Culture is an online resource hosting books, periodicals, and archival materials documenting LGBT political, social and cultural movements throughout the twentieth century and into the present day. The collection illuminates the lives of lesbians, gays, transgender, and bisexual individuals and the community with content including selections from The National Archives in Kew, materials collected by activist and publisher Tracy Baim from the mid-1980s through the mid-2000s, the Magnus Hirschfeld and Harry Benjamin collections from the Kinsey Institute, periodicals such as En la Vida and BLACKlines, select rare works from notable LGBT publishers including Alyson Books and Cleis Press, as well as mainstream trade and university publishers."
   
• Manuscript Women's Letters and Diaries from the American Antiquarian Society, 1750-1950
  Previously unpublished letters and diaries of women of the 18th, 19th, and 20th century.
   
• North American Women's Letters and Diaries
  Letters and diaries from the 17th-century through the Vietnam War era.