Cooking Up a Collection

One of the library’s most well-known resources is Haber’s brainchild—an extensive collection of cookbooks and books on culinary history.

Though the cookbook collection numbered roughly 1,500 by the 1960s, it has grown in recent years to become one of the largest in the world, with Haber’s push for culinary history to be recognized as a valid research pursuit.

Just down the hall from her office, an enlarged, autographed photo portrait of Julia Child stands atop an easel—one of many pieces of memorabilia in the room dedicated to the colorful TV personality who charmed audiences with her culinary panache.

A giant spoon hangs nearby, accompanied by a plaque from the 1998 Food Arts 10th Anniversary Dinner declaring Child the “Honoree of the Decade.”

Child has been a major supporter of the library, donating her papers and also providing financial support.

“Julia has been a very good friend to us,” Haber says.

Child’s plaque is one of many that hangs on the Schlesinger’s walls. Many of the shelves in the stacks are endowed. Even the library’s elevator was donated by the Radcliffe College Class of 1967.

The Schlesinger Library’s walls have almost as much to say as its books or manuscripts.

In the periodical room, a poster from the First National Women’s Conference in 1977 reads “American Women on the Move.” The signing of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, is captured in a photograph on the walls of the manuscript reading room.

Though male portraits may rule on the majority of Harvard’s walls, women dominate on the walls of the Schlesinger’s spiral staircase. Amelia Earhart, Betty Friedan and Lydia Pinkham are among the women featured.

All these women’s papers are part of the library’s manuscript collections.

From Guns to Glamour

In the Schlesinger’s periodical room, women and gender studies play a central role.

Researchers can examine 1970s beauty trends in Mademoiselle or Vanity Fair, or peruse newsletters published by women’s organizations during the second wave of the women’s movement—from Leaping Lesbians to The Scarlet Letter.