A copy of each of the papers prepared by participants in College and Institute programs will be kept in the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, hidden on the first floor of the old Radcliffe College Library building that now also houses the Institute. When a gift of the Women's Rights Collection provided the nucleus for a Women's Archives in 1943, the aim of its founders was to collect source materials for easier writing of what was then a neglected history.
Until about three or four years ago, the 18,000-volume library retained much the same function by collecting, preserving and making available materials for people studying American women's history. The collection now includes such diverse materials as a complete set of the Ladies Home Journal, from its first issue, numerous books on etiquette and cooking, and the "Maimie Papers," a series of descriptive letters written by a reformed prostitute about her past.
But until the late '60s and early '70s there were so few researchers interested in the library's resources that the historian Anne Firor Scott could write in her journal as late as 1960, "Women's Archives very welcoming...glad to have somebody using their stuff." But things have changed--the greatest external influence on the library has no doubt been the national women's movement, which has increased curiosity about the history of women and legitimized the study of it. And with the naming of the Schlesinger Library as the official repository of the records of the National Organization of Women and Women's Equity Action League, the Library's administration has committed itself to the continuing documentation of the feminist movement in the present and the future.
The Library has also moved in the past few years from its position as a collector to a sponsor of research. The decision on what kind of project to sponsor, Patricia M. King, director of the Library, says is based on what "researchers seem to be most interested in." There is now, for example, a tremendous interest in working class women, she says. Hence, a project is being supported based on the papers of the Women's Trade Union League.
The Library is at the same time sponsoring oral history projects, backed by foundation grants, to supplement written records on file. While one of these is just winding up--a study on population requiring interviews with people active in the birth control movement, in child and health care, and sex education--a more recent one will concentrate on the history of black women in America. "The rationale for this one is different," King says. "While most of the women will have played a public role, they are not so likely to have written records, or to have reached the same level of prominence. It will serve as a substitute for written records."
The recently-announced program which King said has already received more than 100 letters suggesting candidates for interviews, will be limited to 40 or 50 extensive oral autobiographies, including family background and sources of motivation, with special attention given to histories of elderly women. Besides community leaders and professional women, the Library has also received suggestions to include ordinary people like hairdressers in the oral history.
As interest in women's studies has grown, so has the presence of men in the Library. King says 10 to 15 per cent of the library's users are now men, utilizing the resources either for women's history in particular or to supplement a more general history. The most requested papers recently have been those of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a nineteenth century feminist theoretician who believed economic independence to be the foremost need of all women. But perhaps more important, in a study King did recently of the Schlesinger Library's manuscript users, she found four subjects--education and educated women, employment and working class women, feminism and suffrage, and the woman and her body--overwhelmingly sought after at the Institute. She says the figures indicate the Library's current resources as well as the drift of public interest, and that some of the lesser studied subjects, like religion, abolition and immigrant women, may be more popular elsewhere.
In defining the focus of the Library, King does not mention women's history, as one might expect, but instead social history with an emphasis on women. With that broad a focus, and with the already-proven adaptability of the Library, King seems justified in not worrying about the future role of the Library within the community. Even in the unlikely case of a merger of Radcliffe with Harvard, King says she thinks the Library is already well-established enough that it could easily function as part of the Harvard College Library.
The Institute and the Library are today speaking to new needs within the Radcliffe community, Dean Graham says. While in the past the College was intended to provide access to undergraduate education, she says, the needs of women beyond the undergraduate years are now being addressed. While until recently the Institute administered its own budget--it was moved to the jurisdiction of Radcliffe College recently at the request of Harvard--it has always been inextricably tied to Radcliffe, with Graham serving both as dean of the Institute and vice-president of Radcliffe College. But as the influence of Radcliffe as an undergraduate institution has begun to wane, the national prestige and respect accorded the Institute and Library has waxed, perhaps pointing to a continued role for Radcliffe in higher education with or without merger.