Hello, everyone! My name is Caroline Collins (she/her) and I am the new vice co-chair of the SAA Women’s Collections Section. While I hail from North Carolina, I currently live in Richmond, Virginia, and work at the Library of Virginia as a local records archivist. My job primarily involves processing Virginia locality government records – I say locality because Virginia is comprised of both counties and incorporated cities that function as county equivalents. I first became a member of SAA while a MSIS student at the University of Texas at Austin, and I’m excited for the opportunity to work w ..read more

Join the Women’s Collections Section for our 2023 Section Meeting! We’ll be discussing events from the last year, leadership for the 2023-2024 steering committee, and other resources. There will be presentations from members of the community that focus on creative strategies and innovative means repositories are using to highlight stories of women and gender non-conforming individuals. This call extends to repositories that may fall outside traditional bounds and collections that are not traditionally seen as being “women’s collections.” There is still room in the meeting for additional presen ..read more

The SAA Women’s Collections Section is currently seeking nominees for the roles of Vice Co-Chair/Co-Chair Elect! Vice Co-Chair/Co-Chair Elect: For the first year of the two-year term, these two elected officers will hold the positions of Vice Co-Chairs. The second year in office, the elected officers will hold the positions of Co-Chairs. The role of the Vice Co-Chair is to act as an officer of the section, work with the other Co-Chairs to develop projects and opportunities to connect section members, manage the section’s annual meeting and elections, and above all, work with the section’s memb ..read more

The Women’s Collections Section (WCS) of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) are seeking panel proposals and presentations for the WCS section meeting to be held June 20, 2023 at 1PM CST/2PM EST! This year we are seeking proposals that focus on creative strategies and innovative means repositories are using to highlight stories of women and gender non-conforming individuals. This call extends to repositories that may fall outside traditional bounds and collections that are not traditionally seen as being “women’s collections.” We especially invite proposals that highlight stories of Quee ..read more

The following post was written and contributed by Lori Hostuttler, Interim Director of the West Virginia & Regional History Center at the West Virginia University Libraries. In 2017, I traveled to Charleston, West Virginia, to meet with Christine Daugherty and a group of women interested in preserving their history of activism and engagement. Christine had long fought for women’s causes and for the rights of children and people of color. A potter and artist, in the 1980s, she founded Women and Employment, an organization dedicated to ushering women into non-traditional fields, particularly ..read more

Plate D20271, found during recent cabinet inventories, pictures Women Astronomical Computers with observation instruments at the Harvard College Observatory, circa 1920s. Seven of the nine women pictured are yet to be identified. Margaret Walton Mayall, a Woman Astronomical Computer, is second from the left and Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, the first person to earn a PhD in Astronomy from Harvard, is in the back row, second from the right. Image credit: Astronomical Photographic Glass Plate Collection, Harvard College Observatory. The following post was written and contributed by Lisa Bravata, Cur ..read more

The following post was written and contributed by Janet Olson, Archivist at Frances Willard House Museum & WCTU Archives in Evanston, Illinois. About Us The non-profit Center for Women’s History and Leadership in Evanston, IL, manages the Frances Willard House Museum and Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) Archives. The House Museum preserves and interprets the historic Willard home and its contents, and promotes discussion of Willard’s life and work on behalf of women, temperance, and human rights. The WCTU Archives’ collections, documenting the history of what was at one time the ..read more

The Women’s Collections Section wants to promote your work on our blog! For 2023 we are focusing the blog on projects members have been working on during or after the COVID-19 pandemic. Working in archives during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has required all of us to think on our feet and reassess our work priorities as many of us pivoted to hybrid or fully remote work. The Women’s Collections Section wants to hear about your experiences as we approach the three year anniversary of the beginning of the pandemic. Have you worked on a born-digital collection or curated an online exhibit? C ..read more

This blog post highlights the work of renowned editorial cartoonist Etta Hulme. It was compiled by Sara Pezzoni, Photograph Collections Coordinator at the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries’ Special Collections. The University of Texas at Arlington Libraries’ Special Collections holds the collection of long-time Fort Worth Star-Telegram editorial cartoonist, Etta Hulme. The collection consists of over 10,000 original editorial cartoons that illustrate major events in Fort Worth, Texas, and around the world that occurred during her career at the Star-Telegram. Her first editorial cartoo ..read more

The following post was written by Abbie Steuhm, Student Specialist at the Iowa Women’s Archives, University of Iowa Libraries. The LGBTQ+ community has grown in incredible size and visibility in the last decade. The legalization of same-sex marriage in the U.S. in 2015 was a colossal milestone for LGBTQ+ rights, and it has arguably helped in the normalization and acceptance of LGBTQ+ people nationwide. However, one may wonder about the lives of queer couples before this milestone. What did they do when they wanted to take their relationship to the next level? Did they just live together? Did t ..read more