"Women have made up half the human race but you could never tell that by the books that historians write." -Arthur Schlessinger, Jr. Historian

Women in History Researchers' Resources

Using Primary Sources - Library of Congress Learning Page - http://www.loc.gov/teachers/usingprimarysources/

This is a good place to get a foothold — a primer on types of primary sources and evaluation of sources that offers a good explanation but doesn't overwhelm.

Primary Sources Research - Yale University Library  - http://www.yale.edu/collections_collaborative/primarysources/

A brief primer on the formats of primary source materials, followed by material specific to Yale.

Reading, Writing, and Researching for History: A Guide for College Students - http://academic.bowdoin.edu/WritingGuides/

A simple guide from the Bowdoin College History Department on preparing a research paper for a college-level history course.

 

American Women's History: A Research Guide - http://www.mtsu.edu/~kmiddlet/history/women.html

Over 1300 citations/links to print and Web resources for the serious researcher, including 80 digital collections of primary sources. From librarian Ken Middleton at Middle Tennessee State University.

Repositories of Primary Sources - University of Idaho Library - http://www.uidaho.edu/special-collections/Other.Repositories.html

A listing of over 4400 websites describing holdings of manuscripts, archives, rare books, historical photographs, and other primary sources for the research scholar. Not just another list of repositories, this page covers sites from around the world - with links to pages devoted soley to women's history.

H-Women Archival and Manuscript Collection - http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~women/manuscripts/ 

Directory of Web pages of archives and libraries that have primary source materials relevant to     historical research of women. 

Additional Women's Collections - http://www.lib.utsa.edu/Archives/WomenGender/links.html

Guide to Web pages of archives, libraries, and other repositories that have primary source materials by or about women. By state. From the Archives for Research on Women and Gender, University of Texas, San Antonio.

Matilda Joslyn Gage Website Links to Websites on Women in the 19th Century - http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/gage/features/gage_lnk.html

An extensive collection of sites that includes primary source materials and archives. Arranged topically.

Archival Sites for Women's Studies - http://libr.org/wss/wsslinks/archwss.htm

Compiled by the Women's Studies Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries. An alphabetic listing by region of the country.

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) - http://www.archives.gov

The Archival Research Catalog is an online searchable database of almost 200,000 artifacts and over 400,000 archival holdings descriptions, a limited portion of NARA's vast holdings.

WWW Virtual Library History Index: Women's History - http://www.iisg.nl/w3vlwomenshistory/

Annotated directory of women's history Web sites covers major meta-indexes, journals, conferences, institutions, and Web resources by time period, geography, and topic. The topical index includes Jewish, lesbian, labor, business, artists, music, medicine and nursing, aviation and space, science and engineering, writers, and women's rights and suffrage. Searchable.

Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture - http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/women/

Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University. Three collections here that include scanned images and text: Civil War Women; Documents from the Women's Liberation Movement - transcribed texts and images of over 40 articles, pamphlets, flyers, and booklets from 1969-74; African-American Women. Each collection includes links to other sites; the Civil War Women - Primary Sources on the Internet is excellent. See the subject guide to the collection.

Internet Women's History Soucebook - http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/women/womensbook.html

How are historians to remedy the silence about women in many traditional accounts of history? This sourcebook attempts to present online documents and secondary discussions which reflect the various ways of looking at the history of women within broadly defined historical periods and areas of  Ancient, Medieval and Modern history.

ViVa: A Bibliography of Women's History in Historical and Women's Studies Journals - http://www.iisg.nl/~womhist/vivahome.php

Searchable bibliography of women's history articles in historical and women's studies journals. Citations are to articles in English and other languages from more than 100 European and U.S. publications. The database goes back to 1975. From the International Institute of Social History.

National First Ladies' Library - http://www.firstladies.org/

Extensive bibliography of books, articles, letters, manuscripts, and other materials by and about the First Ladies (and not necessarily in the collection of the Library in Canton, Ohio. Manuscripts listed do include locations. Except for the brief White House biographies, none of the materials are online sources.

National Women's History Project - Resource Center - http://www.nwhp.org/resourcecenter/links.php

Extensive, annotated list of Web resources. A great starting point. 

National Women's Hall of Fame - http://greatwomen.org/

Brief biographies of the inductees to the Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, NY, the birthplace of women's rights. Two hundred notable women (past or present) in the U.S. While not a scholar's site, it is at least interesting to follow the growing list of inductees.

Gale Free Resources - Women's History Month - http://www.gale.com/free_resources/whm/index.htm

Brief biographies of nearly 100 women and a timeline.

Susan B. Anthony Center for Women's Leadership at Rochester University - http://www.rochester.edu/SBA/index.html

See in particular: Suffrage History; Resources

Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony - http://www.pbs.org/stantonanthony/

Companion site to a PBS program. The Resources section has pointers to additional information: documents, articles, books, organizations. 

What did you do in the war, Grandma? - http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/WWII_Women/tocCS.html 

Examples of oral histories -- Rhode Island women during World War II -- written by Honors English high school students. Includes other information about women in the war: glossary, a timeline, essays, bibliography, and links to more. 

African American Women Writers of the 19th Century - http://digital.nypl.org/schomburg/writers_aa19/ 

Full-text, searchable database of 52 published works by 19th-century black women writers. Collection of the Digital Schomburg of the New York Public Library.

Places Where Women Made History - http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/pwwmh/ 

Information from the National Park Service on 74 historic properties in Massachusetts and New York. 

Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1830-1930 - http://womhist.binghamton.edu/ 

A searchable collection of primary documents related to this topic/era. Organized around grad student editorial projects, each of which poses a question and provides 15-20 documents that address the question. Offers an "opportunity to understand historical research and writing as an interpretive process based on documents." 

Notable American Ancestors- http://www.rootsweb.com/~nwa/women.html

Biographical and genealogical information about these "foremothers." The list of Women's History Links includes links to biographies and some primary source materials. 

WestWeb: Western History Resource - Making It Their Own: Women in the West - http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/westweb/pages/women.html

Primary texts, biographies, images and links for further research. From Catherine Lavender, of the Department of History, College of Staten Island, City University of New York.

National Union Catalog - http://lcweb.loc.gov/coll/nucmc/nucmc.html

NUCMC, or the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections, is a free-of-charge cooperative cataloging program operated by the Library of Congress. The NUCMC page has many interesting links including a list of 5500 Web sites of Repositories of Primary Sources. The Library of Congress site contains a wealth of historical information including the Library of Congress Online Catalog, and the American Memory page.

American Memory (Library of Congress) - http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/

Digital collection of historical documents. Includes projects concerned with women's history, including: National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection, 1848-1921 (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/rbnawsahtml) Women Come to the Front: Journalists, Photographers, and Broadcasters during World War II (http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/wcf/wcf0001.html)Women Pioneers in American Memory (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/features/women/women.html)

Ohio Historical Society - http://www.ohiohistory.org/

Check the Resources page for services, databases and documents at the OHS and online.

A Guide to Archival and Manuscript Resources on Women in Greater Cleveland

Online version of the guide to local agencies for primary source research published by Women Historians of Greater Cleveland.

DISCUSSIONS GROUPS: SUBSCRIPTION LISTSERVS (E-MAIL) & NEWSGROUPS: (MESSAGE BOARD)

Topica - http://lists.topica.com/dir/?cid=0

Browse or search for a group that matches your topic, e.g., women and history. You find instructions on how to subscribe and how to request an information file.

H-Net Discussion Networks  - http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/lists/ 

From H-Net, Humanities & Social Sciences Online, an interdisciplinary organization with edited lists and peer reviewed essays and discussion for teachers, researchers and the interested public. Look through the list for topics of interest, e.g., Civil War, women in the military. Here are two examples:

H-SAWH - http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~sawh/

H-NET List for Women and Gender in the South (639 subscribers) 

H-Women - http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~women/

H-NET List for Women's History (3,604 subscribers) 

Google Groups - http://groups.google.com/

Google is now the repository of the Usenet discussion archives. You can seach discussions by keyword or browse by group. You will not be able to post from this service.

SEARCHING THE INTERNET

Best Search Tools - http://lii.org/search/file/searchtools

From the Librarians Index to the Internet. Great search tools all on one page.

CORE (Comprehensive Online Research Education) - http://www.lib.purdue.edu/core/

Purdue University's online tutorial for developing an "information strategy." You must register (free) to begin the lessons but this allows you to return anytime and measures your progress. It will take you from understanding the research process to identifying, locating, evaluating, and managing information.

Search Engine Watch http://www.searchenginewatch.com

Check in with Search Engine Watch from time to time to find out what's new with search engines. For now, take a look at two pages from Search Engine Watch: Analytics and Search Engine Math - A simple math-od for effective searching and Boolean Searching

Bare Bones 101 http://www.sc.edu/beaufort/library/pages/bones/bones.shtml

University of SouthCarolina Beaufort Library"s easy introduction to searching concepts. Focus on these lessons. There are also excellent descriptions of some of the major services.

Lesson 1 - Search Engines

Lesson 2 - Meta-Search Engines

Lesson 3 - Subject Directories

Lesson 6 - Creating a Search Strategy

Lesson 7 - Basic Search Tips

Lesson 8 - Searching With Boolean Logic and Proximity Operators

Lesson 10-Troubleshooting: What To Do If...

EVALUATING SOURCES AND CITING YOUR WORK

Sources: Their Use and Acknowledgement - http://www.dartmouth.edu/~sources/

From Dartmouth University. This work "provides a rationale for why, and offers principles for determining when and how, you should cite sources".

A Brief Citation Guide for Internet Sources in History and the Humanities - http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/about/citation/

From Melvin E. Page for H-Net. Suggestions for attributing electronic sources based on the standard academic citation style of Kate Turabian.

JUST FOR FUN!

American Women in History quiz
The National Women’s History Project History Quizzes
About.com Women's History Games, Quizzes, and Puzzles
Education World's Women's History Month page
Gifts of Speech
...and of course, the WIH host site: Lakewood Public Library (and our launch page for library PCs)