Volume 1

Number 2

CONTENTS

FROM THE EDITORS

The Importance of Outreach and Documentation
in the Archival Enterprise    1

Ruth C. Carter
Thomas J. Frusciano

What’s in a Name? Outreach vs. Basic Services: A Survey
of College and University Archivists    5

Tamar G. Chute

Many archivists believe that outreach is an important part of their job. However, how do archivists define the term outreach? How does outreach compare to basic services? What types of outreach programs are being done? This article reports the results of a survey that asked college and university archivists to answer these and similar questions. The author describes the respondents’ answers, compares their opinions about outreach and basic services, and reports the types of outreach programs that are done. The article concludes with a new and more inclusive definition of outreach that is based on the respondents’ answers.

KEYWORDS. Outreach, college and university archives, survey, basic archival services

A New Archival Model? An Examination of Documentation
Strategy via The Fales Library & Special Collections’
Downtown New York Collection    41

René Boatman

The Downtown Collection’s holdings expansively redefine traditional archival models enabling us to rethink key elements of archival theory, methodology, and practice. Further, its commitment to documenting non-traditional subject matter and maintaining dynamic relationships with artists, donors, scholars and the public mirrors the post-structural influence that is felt in the collection. Ultimately, the Collection’s efforts to open up the content of its subject–the Downtown New York scene from 1975 to the present–as well as its holdings and follow the material’s lead in pushing the limits of library structures, produces an expanded archival model that houses rich forms of material, better intellectual access, and even, for some, social activism.

KEYWORDS. Archival methods, archival theory, avant-garde arts scene, Downtown New York Collection, documentation strategies, digital projects, The Fales Library & Special Collections, New York University, Marvin J. Taylor

“Educate a Girl?? You Might as Well Attempt to Educate
a Cat!”: Documenting Women’s Education at a Single-Sex
Collegiate Institution    53

Nanci A. Young

This article examines how materials collected by the Smith College Archives document the official life of the College, as well as the lives of undergraduates as they participate in student organizations, athletics, musical groups, and engage in other social relationships. It explores how the material has been collected, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the primary source material. It also examines how collections have been used to interpret what it was like to educate a woman in a single-sex institution at the end of the nineteenth century, and what it was truly like for the women who came to Smith to be educated. In addition, the article discusses a collaborative digitization project between the Five Colleges in the Pioneer Vallet (Amherst, Hampshire, Mt. Holyoke, Smith, and the University of Massachusetts), funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation between 1996 and 1999, that made selected records on women’s education available to the research community on the World Wide Web.

KEYWORDS. Smith College Archives, higher education history, women’s higher education, historical research, student life and culture, digital projects, primary sources

“To Save Them from the Dangers to Their Faith”: Documenting
Student Life at Catholic Women’s Colleges    65

Fernanda H. Perrone

This article explores the history of Catholic women’s colleges and former women’s colleges in the United States, with specific focus on student life in the mid-twentieth century. In the peak year 1956-1957, 42,900 young Catholic (and sometimes non-Catholic) women attended about 116 colleges, a significant proportion of the higher educational sector. These colleges helped acculturate many children of Irish, German, Eastern European and Italian families to middle-class American society, at the same time creating a specifically female and Catholic culture on the college campuses. This culture, which was characterized by the ideals of femininity, religion, and service, can be reconstructed through materials in the college archives: for example, through minutes of faculty committees and student organizations, records of college events, photographs, audio-visual material, scrapbooks, catalogs, and student publications. The archives of Catholic women’s colleges are important in that they document a little-studied area of American life-Catholic women’s culture–and furthermore show how it has changed and evolved up to the contemporary period.

KEYWORDS. Catholic women’s colleges, women and religion, student life and culture, higher education history, women’s higher education, historical research, primary sources

Bridging Generations: Undergraduate Research Opportunities
on the History of Women at Rutgers University    77

Thomas J. Frusciano

Since 1994, undergraduate students at Rutgers University have had the opportunity to explore broad issues in the history of women’s higher education by examining issues surrounding single-sex and coeducation at their own institution, with specific concentration on social issues and student culture. Four distinct seminars and projects, two of which incorporate oral history, and all four involving historical research in archival sources, have contributed to the historical literature and have added valuable documentation on the history of women at Rutgers University. This article presents an overview of these specific courses. It further provides an assessment from the particular perspective of a university archivist who attempts to document the history of the institution, promote the use of that documentary record by a diverse audience of users, including undergraduate students, and who has had the opportunity to teach two seminars on the history of women’s higher education, using Rutgers as a case study. The courses to be discussed are: “Rutgers Women: A Living History” (1993-1995), a research seminar incorporating oral history of the first women students to enter the previously all-male Rutgers College in 1972; the Rutgers Oral History Archives of World War II (1994 to present), an ongoing project recording the memories of Rutgers men and women and their wartime experiences; the Douglass College Scholar’s Program seminar on psychobiography (1998), a seminar which explored the life of Mary Clara Kangler, a 1938 graduate of the New Jersey College for Women whose tragic life ended in suicide; and the Douglass College Scholar’s Program seminar on the history of the Douglass College and its role in the history of women’s higher education in the United States (1999-2002), a research seminar based on archival research which explored the experiences of women and the controversial issues surrounding women’s education at Rutgers.

KEYWORDS. Higher education history, women’s higher education, historical research, student life and culture, digital projects, primary sources, Rutgers University, Douglass College, undergraduate students, curricula

Documenting the Broad Character of Student Populations
in Women’s Higher Education: A Commentary    89

Bette Weneck

The three preceding articles identify the existence of a body of archival records of higher education institutions that can support historical investigation into the varied aspects of student life for women. Following a summary of those presentations, the author poses a series of historical questions relating to women’s collegiate institutions and student life that scholars and students of women’s higher education history might ask to gain a broader view of women’s higher learning and “build meaningful contexts in which the evolution of women’s higher learning can truly be appreciated.” An examination of the archival records of private, parochial, and public institutions of higher education for women may assist with answering specific and nagging questions and help arrive at a “fuller, more inclusive history of women’s higher education.”

KEYWORDS. Higher education history, women’s higher education, historical research, student life and culture, Teachers College, Columbia University