Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies: Historical Text Collections

Includes early marketing studies for oral contraceptives.

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.

Full text searchable database with additional indexing (geographic, marital status, life events, etc.).

"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."

"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."

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 MichiganSuffrage collections from the University of Manchesterfull list of collections

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.

Struggle for Women's Rights, Organizational Records, 1880-1990Includes 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 RightsWoman'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 WeissSeries 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 CorpsContains 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.

HEARTH is a core electronic collection of books and journals in Home Economics and related disciplines published between 1850 and 1950.

"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 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."

Previously unpublished letters and diaries of women of the 18th, 19th, and 20th century.

See also the Planned Parenthood Records in the Women's Studies Archive, listed below.

Letters and diaries from the 17th-century through the Vietnam War era.

Complete facsimile images of over 230 manuscripts written or compiled by women living in the British Isles during the 16th and 17th centuries. Contents include account books, advice, culinary writing, meditation, travel writing, and verse. Perdita manuscripts can be indexed by name, place, genre, and first lines of both poetry and prose

Thematic collections include Fashion, Gay and Lesbian Rights, Sex and Sexuality, Women's Rights, and Religion, Morality, and Censorship. Includes digitized full run of Gay.

"This unique collection showcases the development of 'popular' medicine in America during the nineteenth century, through an extensive range of material that was aimed at the general public rather than medical professionals. Explore an array of printed sources, including rare books, pamphlets, trade cards, and visually-rich advertising ephemera."

Collections from the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, including the correspondence, research papers and records spanning the careers of the first three directors: Dr Alfred C. Kinsey (1947-1956), Dr Paul H. Gebhard (1956-1982) and Dr June Reinisch (1982-1993). This collection compliments another collection: Sex Research: Early Literature from Statistics to Erotica from the Kinsey Institute.

Women's travel diaries and correspondence from the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. Includes manuscripts, diaries, travel journals, correspondence, photographs, postcards and ephemera, from 1818 to the 1970s. The geographical area covered by these diaries is far-reaching, with travel to countries within the British, French, Chinese and American empires and discussion of empire and nationalism, as well as description of the post-colonial world. A great variety of modes of transport are covered, including sea voyages, road trips, wagon trains and air travel.

Brings together the instructional, prescriptive, behavioral, and etiquette literature that defined standards of personal conduct for millions of Americans and reflected the prevailing social mores across the twentieth century.

A comprehensive collection offering a wide range of writings on the subject of witchcraft. The majority of texts are in Latin, English and German, although there are also selected items in French, Italian, Portuguese, Danish, Dutch and Spanish. Dates span 1500 to 1930.

"Explores prominent themes in world history since 1820: conquest, colonization, settlement, resistance, and post-coloniality, as told through women's voices. With a clear focus on bringing the voices of the colonized to the forefront, this highly-curated archive and database includes documents related to the Habsburg Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the British, French, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Japanese, and United States Empires, and settler societies in the United States, New Zealand and Australia."

Online archive of published and manuscript primary sources focusing on women's international activism since the mid-nineteenth century. The archive includes proceedings of women's international conferences, books, pamphlets, articles from newspapers and journals, as well as correspondence, diary entries, and memoirs. Also contains numerous online publications of contemporary Non-Governmental Organizations

Includes timelines, documents, and biographical sources.

This collection includes more than 50 digitized archival collections. Some have been digitized directly from manuscript collections others have been digitized from microfilm. Highlights include:
Committee of Fifteen Records, 1900-1901 - includes files and manuscript field reports from anti-vice inspectors
Gwendolyn Bennett Papers,1916-1981
The Papers of Mary McLeod Bethune, 1903-1962
Earl Conrad/Harriet Tubman Collection
The Eusebia Cosme Papers
European Women's Periodicals - from the International Archive of the Women's Movement
Grassroot Feminist Organizations, Parts 1& 2
HM Prison Holloway Records, 1852-1949
Herstory, Women and Law, and Women and Health/Mental Health - from the National Women's History Project
The Malthusian and Eugenics Review
National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses Records, 1908-1951
Planned Parenthood of America Records, 1918-1974
Fredi Washington Papers, 1925-1979
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, 1919-1959; the Women's Peace Union, 1921-1940; and the Woman's Peace Party, 1914-1920
Women's Labour League: Conference Reports and Journals, 1906-1977
Women's Lives Series: American Women Missionaries and Pioneers
Women's Trade Union League and Its Leaders

" ... a collection of letters to and from women in the Middle Ages, from the 4th to the 13th century. The letters, written in Latin, appear under the names of the women involved, with English translations and, where possible, biographical sketches of the women and some description of the subject matter or the historic context of the letter."

A fully searchable library of English and American poetry, drama, and prose, plus biographies, bibliographies, and key secondary sources.

Wide-ranging collections of information for conducting genealogical and local history research. Includes: digitized images of the United States Federal Census from 1790 forward; the American Genealogical Biographical Index; Passenger and Immigration Lists Index; United Kingdom and United States Directories 1680-1830; court, land, and probate records; and many other resources.

Provides an interactive research environment that allows researchers to cross-search Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) and Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO) and to discover and analyze content in new ways.

Provides full-text and full-page-image access to a vast range of English-language and foreign-language titles printed in the United Kingdom between 1701 and 1800, along with thousands of important works from the Americas. Includes books, pamphlets, broadsides, and ephemera. Based on the extensive microfilm collection: the Eighteenth Century.

Alexander Street Literature is a comprehensive, cross-searchable package of collections covering literatures of place, race, and gender. It includes poetry, short fiction, and novels, along with full-text plays and film scripts.

"The Latino-Hispanic American Experience: Leaders, Writers and Thinkers presents thematic content focusing on the evolution of Hispanic civil rights, religious thought, and the growing presence of women writers from the late 19th and 20th centuries. Rare and relevant books and newspapers --including rare anarchist newspapers -- are presented in their original form. Extensive manuscript collections of both organizations and individuals are included for viewing, indexed for ease of search and maximum discovery. This collection offers a unique approach, focusing exclusively on the Latino-Hispanic history in the United States."--Online provider's description.

Series 1 presents a digital collection of historical content pertaining to U.S. Hispanic history, literature and culture. "Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project" -- from which the collections draws its content, is the largest national project ever to locate, preserve and disseminate Hispanic culture of the United States in its written form from colonial times until 1960. The collection accurately conveys the creative life of U.S. Hispanics, and sheds new light on the intellectual vigor and traditional values that have characterized Hispanics from the earliest moments of this country's history through contemporary times.

Collection of proposals, pilot studies, advertisements, reports, memorandums, letters, and supporting material created by Ernest Dichter and the Institute for Motivational Research.

A wide-ranging digital resource presenting a unique insight into interactions between American Indians and Europeans from their earliest contact, continuing through the turbulence of the American Civil War, the on-going repercussions of government legislation, right up to the civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century. This resource contains material from the Newberry Library's extensive Edward E. Ayer Collection. Includes manuscripts, artwork and rare printed books, photographs and newspapers. Browse through a wide range of rare and original documents from treaties, speeches and diaries, to historic maps and travel journals.

Database of English language letters, diaries, autobiographies, oral histories, and other personal narratives providing insight into history dating from the 1550s to the present. Documents included in the index and ful-text collections are indexed for subjects, historical events, personal events, places, and dates.

The collection presents more than 61,000 books from the period 1460-1850, and 466 pre-1906 serials. The collection focuses on economics interpreted in the widest sense, including political science, history, sociology, and special collections on banking, finance, transportation and manufacturing. The collection includes works by major economists as well as political pamphlets, government publications, proclamations and other ephemera.

Provides access to over letters, diaries, memoirs and accounts concerning events that took place in North America between 1534 and 1860. The focus of the database is on description, travel, and accounts of interactions among various cultural groups.

This resource includes essays on British social history collected between 1937 and 1972 during a project called the Mass Observation. The archives also include photographs, file reports, diaries, day surveys and links to other sites.

A digitized version of the Early English Books microfilm collection, this database contains full-text page images of of about 100,000 of the 1250,000 titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640) and Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and their revised editions, as well as the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661) collection. Also includes a growing collection of searchable full text provided by the EEBO Text Creation Partnership.