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# American Women: A Guide to Women's History Resources at the Library of Congress

The Library's unique and diverse collections are rich with resources for the study of women's history. This research guide gathers together a collection of topical guides and essays that tell the stories of women in America.

            - Introduction
            - Using the Library of Congress

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**Editors:**Barbara Bavis, *Bibliographic and Research Instruction Librarian, Law Library of Congress*

Elizabeth Fulford, *Senior Network Specialist, Network Development and MARC Standards Office*

**Note:**This guide is a collection of the Library of Congress Research Guides produced as a part of the American Women Series, originally published as *American Women: A Library of Congress Guide for the Study of Women's History and Culture in the United States* (Library of Congress, 2001).

**Created:** December 16, 2021

**Last Updated:** December 16, 2021

#                      Introduction                     

This research guide gathers together and updates most of the topical and format-based sections of the online presentation of 456-page print resource guide entitled, *American Women: A Library of Congress Guide for the Study of Women's History and Culture in the United States*, which was published in December 2001 by the Library of Congress in cooperation with the University Press of New England.

                              - "American Women: Guide to Women's History Resources Published," by Robin RauschRead an article on the original print publication from the Library of Congress Information Bulletin (LCIB), January 2002.

## Table of Contents

Each component of this series is published as an individual research guide and can be accessed from the following links:

## Selected Images from the Library of Congress

### Carol M. Highsmith, photographer. *The Women's March was a worldwide protest...to advocate legislation and policies regarding human rights and other issues, including women's rights...* 2017. Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division.

### United States National Park Service, contributor. *Women's Rights : Women's Rights National Historical Park, New York*. 1995. Library of Congress Geography and Maps Division.

### Beverly Robinson, photographer. *Mrs. Fannie Lee Teals, of Tifton, Georgia, posing with a quilt top she made, inspired by the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976.* Library of Congress American Folklife Center.

### Charles Dana Gibson. Studies in expression. *When women are jurors.* [1902]. Cabinet of American Illustration. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

### H.M. Coushá, artist. *Detail from "Shell road map: Pennsylvania" showing woman driving a car with license plates in the background.* 1933. Library of Congress Geography & Map Division.

### Liza Donovan, artist. *Hear our voice Women's March on Washington, January 21, 2017.* Courtesy of Amplifier Foundation (Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

### Carol M. Highsmith, photographer. *At the Ground Zero blues club in Clarksdale, Mississippi,...Michelle Powell-Dotson, Arzella Monix, Erma Akines, and ...Necki Akines..., await a performance...* 2016. Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Div.

### Carol M. Highsmith, photographer. *The "When Anthony Met Stanton" scupture, by artist Ted Aub, in Seneca Falls, New York.* 2018. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

## Preface by Carla D. Hayden

The Library of Congress has a long tradition of collecting women’s history materials in a variety of formats and subject areas. As noted in the preface to the first American Women guide, published in 2001, “For two hundred years, the Library of Congress…has been gathering materials necessary to tell the stories of women in America.”1 The Library identified women’s suffrage as a targeted subject for acquisitions with surprising foresight, and it continues to build and strengthen its holdings to document the diversity of American women’s lives.

In 1903 the sixth Librarian of Congress, Ainsworth Spofford, convinced his friend, suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony, to donate her personal collection of more than 250 books and other printed material to the Library. As Anthony prepared her donation, she inscribed many of the books with commentary on their history and importance, creating a valuable record of her reflections on a lifetime of activism.

The Library’s curators soon began amassing manuscripts, scrapbooks, photographs, and other items relating to the struggle for women’s rights, including the papers of Carrie Chapman Catt, Mary Church Terrell, and other suffragists, as well as the records of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and the National Woman’s Party. Together these items form a compelling documentary history of the suffrage campaign from its early connections to the abolition and temperance movements to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment—known as the Anthony Amendment—in August 1920. In fighting for the right to vote, women formed national political organizations and developed new strategies for protest. Women had always represented a vital, but often unacknowledged, part of the nation’s history, and the suffrage movement brought them into the public sphere in new and more visible ways.

Scholarship in women’s history, gender history, women’s studies, and related fields is essential to how we understand American history. This recently revised and updated American Women guide highlights new collection materials and research tools and makes these resources more easily discoverable by researchers. We hope that this guide continues to inspire researchers of all levels in making new discoveries and charting new perspectives on American women.

**Carla D. Hayden**, *Librarian of Congress*

## Notes

                              - See the preface to the print version of  American Women: A Library of Congress Guide for the Study of Women's History and Culture in the United States, , 2001.  Digitized version available online from HathiTrust  Back to text

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      -  Last Updated:  Jul 3, 2024 11:51 AM 
      -  URL:  https://guides.loc.gov/american-women 
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