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Women's Studies
Scope
Women's studies resources range from feminist critiques of topics unrelated to women, to works specifically on how women's lives differ from men's, to works related to or about women. This overview includes all materials in the Library of Congress that can be used to do research on any aspect of women's individual or collective experience.
Size
Materials on women's studies can be found in every class, in every format, in all languages, and for all time periods. It is impossible to give precise numbers of items that relate to women since almost any item could be useful by virtue of its inclusion or exclusion of women.
More than 50,000 titles appear in the Library's computerized catalogs under the Library subject heading "women"; this figure does not include the over 500 books on lesbians, 196 on goddesses, or most novels (many thousands) by or about women. There are about 550 books specifically on African American women, but hundreds more on African Americans' experiences in America, African American literature and music; many of these works would include information on women.
For other peoples of the U.S. and the world, whether defined geographically, historically, racially, nationally, ethnically, or otherwise, the Library's collections are extensive. For example, the Library holds more than 450 titles on women and Islam, and over 2500 on the Virgin Mary. There are over 11,000 books on nursing, and 207 on women and photography. The computer shows over 200 books on women and sports, not counting books on individual sports or biographies.
General Research Strengths
The Research Libraries Group conspectus for women's studies rated the Library's collections at a research or comprehensive level in almost every area, because of the sheer numbers of books and complete runs of journals and newspapers from the all over the United States and abroad, as well as the unique materials found in the special collections.
Areas of Distinction
The Library has extensive serial publications, including long runs of nineteenth-century American and European women's journals, newspapers, old college yearbooks, and publications of women's organizations such as the League of Women Voters and the Female Anti-Slavery societies.
Through the international holdings of the Law Library, women's legal status can be traced over time in all the countries of the world. The Library also has more than 20,000 doctoral dissertations about women. Publications of the U.S. and of foreign governments and of international organizations like the United Nations, can be used to trace social and political reform and economic and demographic changes affecting women.
Microform collections such as Columbia University's Women Pioneers and Professionals, the Suffragists Oral History Collection, and the Twentieth Century Trade Union Woman Collection give first-hand accounts of women's lives. The Hispanic Division has recorded (and videotaped some) over 100 Latin American women writers.
The Library's resources for the study of women's roles in the social and political reform movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are unparalleled. Items of special note include Susan B. Anthony's diaries and scrapbooks, Carrie Chapman Catt's library, film of the 1913 suffragist parade, a manuscript copy of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's controversial work, The Woman's Bible (1895), many photographs of early suffrage gatherings, anti- suffrage cartoons, and the "Cornell University Collection of Women's Rights Pamphlets."
Using the photo archives of Look and U.S. News & World Report (both available in the Prints and Photographs Division), researchers can trace American women's activities from the 1940s to the 1980s. Wonder Woman and Heart Throb comic books plus the 300 pulp fiction magazines provide other examples of how women were viewed in this time period.
Hundreds of other collections augment the Library's ability to serve its patrons. These collections include photographs, radio talk show tapes, tapes from Margaret Mead's expeditions, and many American feature films and television broadcasts.
Weaknesses/Exclusions
The publications of women's organizations have often been printed on poor quality paper, have been brief and irregularly issued, and have had limited distribution. The Library of Congress has not collected many of these types of publications, and especially lacks newsletters of women's organizations. Regional publications of women's groups are not generally added to the Library's collections, but since many women's activities have been conducted on the local level, much of research value has been missed. Preserving these items has had to be left to local libraries.
In the last decade there has been a great increase in the number of foreign women's organizations and in the number of books and serials published by and about women in other countries. This rapid growth during a time of decreasing budgets has made it difficult for the Library to acquire these new materials at the same level as in the past.
Increasingly, manuscript collections and runs of older serials are being made available on microform; the Library has not acquired these microform collections comprehensively.