LibGuides: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Resources: Outside Archives and Collections

Finding Primary Sources

Struggle for Women's Rights, Organizational Records, 1880-1990
Comprised of records of three important women’s rights organizations: the National Woman’s Party, the League of Women Voters, and the Women’s Action Alliance. Originally a committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), the National Woman’s Party (NWP) was founded in 1913 when Alice Paul and her colleagues broke away from NAWSA in dissent over strategy and tactics. The Women’s Action Alliance, established in 1971 as a grass-roots organization, concerned it self with issues such as employment and employment discrimination, childcare, health care, and education. The League of Women Voters collection documents almost every facet of women’s involvement in U.S. politics from 1920 to 1974.
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.

Newspapers & Magazines

Harper's Bazaar (1867- )
An American monthly women's fashion magazine that considers itself to be the style resource for "women who are the first to buy the best, from casual to couture."
Women's Magazine Archive
An archive of leading women’s interest magazines, dating from the 19th century through to the 21st. Collection includes: Cosmopolitan; Essence; Seventeen; Town and Country; Woman's Day; and Women's International Network News.
Women's Wear Daily
An archive of the influential US fashion trade publication, Women's Wear Daily, starting in 1910 and covering material up to the last twelve months. All content is scanned in color with searchable text and indexing.
NewsBank
NewsBank provides a comprehensive collection of reliable news sources covering a wide array of topics and issues including 12,000 total sources with 300+ Illinois publications and 200 countries represented along with diverse news media such as trade journals, video, audio files, broadcast transcripts.
Nexis Uni (Formerly LexisNexis)
Nexis Uni, the successor of LexisNexis Academic, provides full-text access to over 15,000 news, business, and legal sources.The outstanding news coverage includes deep archives and up-to-the-minute stories in national and regional newspapers, wire services, broadcast transcripts, international news, and non-English language news services.

Diaries & Letters

British and Irish Women's Letters & Diaries
This collection includes the immediate experiences of approximately 500 women, as revealed in over 100,000 pages of diaries and letters. The collection includes primary materials spanning more than 300 years.
Manuscript Women's Letters & Diaries
This collection brings together 105,000 pages of the personal writings of women of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.
North American Women's Letters & Diaries
This collection includes the immediate experiences of 1,325 women and 150,000 pages of diaries and letters.

American Women's History Museum
" To create a more equitable America, the Smithsonian is researching, disseminating, and amplifying the histories of American women through its American Women’s History Initiative in preparation for the future Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum." With this goal in mind and "with a digital-first mission and focus, the Smithsonian amplifies a diversity of women’s voices in a new museum and throughout the Smithsonian’s museums, research centers, cultural heritage affiliates, and anywhere people are online."
DIGITAL FEMINIST ARCHIVES @ Barnard
"This archive offers a snapshot of feminist history in the 1960s and 1970s, the institutionalization of women’s centers and women’s studies as an academic discipline, and feminist struggles taking place at colleges and universities, in healthcare and social service centers, in political organizations and neighborhood meetings across the country."
Discovering American Women's History Online
Maintained by Middle Tennessee State University's Walker Library, the Discovering American Women's History Online database
"provides access to digital collections of primary sources (photos, letters, diaries, artifacts, etc.) that document the history of women in the United States."
Harvard's Women Working 1800-1930 Collection
Women Working 1800-1930 "is a unique digital collection comprising over 650,000 individual pages from more than 3,100 books and trade catalogs, 900 archives and manuscript items, and 1,400 photographs. The collection is an exploration of women's impact on the economic life of the United States between 1800 and the Great Depression."
Iowa Women's Archive
"The Iowa Women’s Archives holds more than 1200 manuscript collections that chronicle the lives and work of Iowa women, their families, and their communities. These personal papers and organizational records date from the nineteenth century to the present. Together with oral histories, they document the activities of Iowa women throughout the state and beyond its borders. The Iowa Women’s Archives is open to the public."
Library of Congress LGBTQ+ Studies Web Archive
"The LGBTQ+ Studies Web Archive collects and preserves online content which documents LGBTQ+ history, scholarship, and culture in the United States and around the world. Sites include domestic and international non-profit organizations, journalism and news external link, creative works and expressions, historical records, and more. Collection priorities include primary sources, first-hand accounts, coverage of significant events, and essential artifacts of cultural memory."
Library of Congress Women's and Gender Studies Web Archive
"The Women's and Gender Studies Web Archive collects and preserves online content on topics of importance to the interdisciplinary field of Women's and Gender Studies. Collection priorities include primary sources, first hand accounts, and records of social, cultural, and political movements for gender equality. This archive provides enduring access to resources which illuminate underrepresented perspectives and identities, many of which are not typically found in traditional print resources or in institutions of cultural memory."
National Archives
"The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the nation's record keeper." This links to NARA's digital exhibits and collections.
ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries
The ONE Archives "is the largest repository of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ) materials in the world."
Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History & Culture
"The Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture in Duke's Rubenstein Library acquires, preserves and makes available to a large population of researchers published and unpublished materials that reflect the public and private lives of women, past and present."
Schlesinger Library, Harvard Radcliffe Institute
"The Schlesinger Library illuminates the lives of American women past and present through its collections, research support, public programming, and exhibitions, all while advancing Harvard Radcliffe Institute’s commitment to women, gender, and society."
Women's archives and manuscripts, 1600 - present, British Library
"The British Library holds a range of manuscripts created by women that reflect the lived experiences, interests, innovations and creativity of women over time. This guide aims to provide an overview of some of these archives and manuscripts collected and created by women within the British Library’s modern western manuscripts collections from 1600–present."

ACT UP Oral History Project
"The ACT UP Oral History Project is an archive of 187 interviews with members of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, New York."
Black Women’s Suffrage Digital Collection
The Digital Public Library of America's "Black Women’s Suffrage Digital Collection is a collaborative project to provide digital access to materials documenting the roles and experiences of Black Women in the Women’s Suffrage Movement and, more broadly, women’s rights, voting rights, and civic activism between the 1850s and 1960.

The materials in this collection include photographs, correspondence, speeches, event programs, publications, oral histories, and other artifacts."
Gerber/Hart Library and Archives
"Founded in 1981, Gerber/Hart’s collections focus on the culture and history of LGBTQ peoples and additional marginalized sexual and gender minorities in Chicago and the Midwest. Open to all, Gerber/Hart serves these communities by collecting, preserving, and making accessible collection items of individuals, organizations, and businesses, as well as publicly distributed items. Additionally, Gerber/Hart provides programming and exhibitions related to items in its collections and on other topics in LGBTQ history and culture."
Jewish Women's Archive
"The Jewish Women’s Archive documents Jewish women’s stories, elevates their voices, and inspires them to be agents of change."
Lesbian Herstory Archives
The Lesbian Herstory Archives, a grassroots community-run archives, is "home to the world’s largest collection of materials by and about Lesbians and their communities."
Lesbian Herstory Archives Audio/Visual Collections
The Lesbian Herstory Archives is a grassroots, community-run lesbian archive that dedicates themselves to "to collecting and preserving history pertaining to the lesbian community."

This collection is comprised of "digitized copies of some of the 3,000 oral herstory cassettes in the Archives’ Spoken Word Collection and 950 videotapes in the Video Collection."
National Archives for Black Women's History
"The National Archives for Black Women's History documents the legacy of Mary McLeod Bethune. The archives collects materials about and illustrating Mary McLeod Bethune, the National Council of Negro Women, other African American women's organizations, and individuals associated with those organizations"
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Note: The National Archives for Black Women's History has limited online offerings.
Rise Up!
"The Rise Up! project aims to create a digital archive of original publications, documents, flyers, posters, and many other materials representing feminist activism from the 1970s to 1990s."