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The original print version of this LibGuide appears as a chapter within this resource. This important publication is designed to introduce researchers to the opportunities for discovering American women's history and culture at the library of Congress. Covers materials such as textual sources, films, sound recordings, prints and photographs, and other audio or visual material. Intended for academics, advanced graduate students, genealogists, documentary filmmakers, set and costume designers, artists, actors, novelists, photo researchers, and general readers.  

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Includes essays on selected collections each year and lists and summarizes all annual receipts. Individual essays were written about the following women's history-related collections acquired during the year indicated in parentheses: Ruby A. Black Papers (1984); Martha Dodd Papers (1991); ERAmerica Records (1982); Janet Flanner-Natalia Danesi Murray Papers (1994-95); Patricia Roberts Harris Papers (1985); Shirley Jackson Papers (1991); Margaret Mead Papers (1982); Jeanne S. Mintz Papers (1994-95); National Council of Jewish Women Records (1985); Alla Nazimova Papers (1991); Winn Newman Papers (1993); Maud Wood Park Papers (1979); Ethel L. Payne Papers (1991); Pierce-Aiken Family Papers (1983 and 1991); Ayn Rand Papers (1991); Alice M. Rivlin Papers (1989); Muriel Rukeyser Papers (1981); Hugh H. and Mabel M. Smythe Papers (1994-95); Society of Woman Geographers Records (1988); Hannah G. Solomon Papers (1993); Horace and Anne Montgomery Traubel Papers (1980); Clara A. Whitney Papers (1985); Mabel Walker Willebrandt Papers (1980).

"Collecting, Describing, and Promoting Women's History at the Library of Congress"
In this book chapter, the Manuscript Division's former women's history specialist, Janice E. Ruth, provides a more recent overview of women's history collections and initiatives at the Library of Congress, including a history of the evolution of the American Women Resource Guide.

Describes more than seven hundred division collections, including seventy collections of women's personal papers, organizational records, and family papers. The full guide is available in the General Collections. An unpublished copy of the women's history subset is in the Manuscript Division.

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"The Feminine Presence: Women's Papers in the Manuscript Division," Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress 32 (October 1975): 348-65.
In this special women's history issue of the Library's quarterly journal, Manuscript Division staff member Anita Lonnes Nolen briefly describes the most important women's history collections acquired up to that time. Although they are too numerous to list here, other articles about individual manuscript collections appeared in many issues of the Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, 1943-83 (before 1964 titled Quarterly Journal of Current Acquisitions) during its long publication run.

Through the help of various field-workers, Hinding compiled a two-volume guide comparable in format to the more general National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (Washington: Library of Congress, 1959-93; Z6620.U5 N3; available online) in that it provides brief catalog descriptions of women's history collections located in archival repositories throughout the country. Hinding's guide is arranged geographically by state and city and then alphabetically by name of repository within each city. The entries for each repository are further arranged alphabetically by name of collection. A cumulative index permits subject and name searches across repositories. The fieldworker who surveyed the Manuscript Division's catalogs, finding aids, and some actual collections in the mid-1970s identified 506 collections relating to women's history.

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The Manuscript Division holds microfilm and photocopies of archival and manuscript collections held in archives throughout the United States and abroad. For example, “Spanish Archives of New Mexico (1621-1821)” on twenty-two reels of microfilm includes the official documents of the central and local government then under Spanish control. The East Florida Records (65,000 items; 1737-1858) has marriage licenses for 1785-1803 as well as proceedings from the town council of Saint Augustine from 1812 to 1821. In 1905, the Library established a Foreign Copying Program that brought together many types of reproductions—hand-copied, photostats and photocopies, and microform—from the millions of pages found in archives from around the world. The copies and films from the Archivo General de la Nación of Mexico are excellent sources for the Latina past. Manuscripts filmed at the Archivo Histórico Nacional and the Archivo General de Indias in Spain are also fruitful sources for researchers interested in searching for the context of women's lives during the period of Spanish colonial rule in what has become the United States. The Hispanic World is an excellent guide to these materials.

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