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Women's and Gender Studies

Subject-Specific Primary Source Databases and Indexes

A "collection of primary sources for the historical study of sex, sexuality, and gender. With material dating back to the sixteenth century, researchers and scholars can examine how sexual norms have changed over time, health and hygiene, the development of sex education, the rise of sexology, changing gender roles, social movements and activism, erotica, and many other interesting topical areas. This growing archival program offers rich research opportunities across a wide span of human history" (publisher's description).
 
"Comprises thousands of fully searchable images of rare books, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes. Material is especially rich in conduct of life and domestic management literature, offering vivid insights into the daily lives of women and men, as well as emphasizing contrasts in regional, urban and rural cultures" (publisher's description).
 
Includes primary sources for the study of gender history, women’s suffrage, the feminist movement and the men’s movement. Other key areas represented in the material include: employment and labor, education, government and legislation, the body, domesticity, and the family.
 
The Gerritsen Collection of Women's History, 1543-1945: A Bibliographic Guide to the Microform Collection
Main Library Reference HQ 1121 .G47 Guide
In the late 1800's, Dutch physician and feminist Aletta Jacobs and her husband C.V. Gerritsen began collecting books, pamphlets, and periodicals reflecting the revolution of a feminist consciousness and the movement for women's rights. By the time their successors finished their work in 1945, the Gerritsen Collection was the greatest single source for the study of women's history in the world, with over two million pages of materials spanning four centuries and 15 languages. The microforms to the Gerritsen Collection are at Main Library Microfilm HQ 1121 .G47 and Main Library Microfiche HQ 1121 .G47.
 
This collection includes the immediate experiences of 1,325 women and 150,000 pages of diaries and letters.
 
Contains manuscripts written or compiled by women in the British Isles during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Produced in association with the Perdita Project based at the University of Warwick and Nottingham Trent University, the project seeks to rediscover early modern women authors who were “lost” because their writing exists only in manuscript form.
 
The full contents of Vogue magazine (U.S. edition), a monthly fashion and lifestyle magazine that covers style news, including haute couture fashion, beauty, in full color page image, from the first issue in 1892 to the present, with monthly updates for new issues.
 
Organized around the history of women in social movements in the U.S. between 1600 and 2000, the site seeks to advance scholarly debates and understanding of U.S. history. Includes primary source documents, images, biographical information, and an American women's history chronology.
 
The finding aid which makes up a part of Women in The National Archives enables researchers to quickly locate details of documents held at The National Archives, UK relating to women. This finding aid is far more detailed and extensive than anything available elsewhere online and has the benefit of ranging across all of the classes held at the archive. The original primary source documents cover the campaign for women's suffrage in Britain, 1903-1928 and the granting of women's suffrage in colonial territories, 1930-1962. The addition of four significant HO 45 files on the suffrage question plus an extended chronology further enhance the collection."
 
Part of the online database Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO), includes a wide array of primary source documents — serials, books, manuscripts, diaries, reports, and visuals — that focus on issues at the intersection of gender and class from the late-eighteenth century to the era of suffrage in the early-twentieth century, all through a transnational perspective.
 
"A searchable archive of leading women’s interest magazines, dating from the 19th century through to the 21st. Consumer magazines aimed at a female readership are recognized as critical primary sources through which to interpret multiple aspects of 19th and 20th-century history and culture" (publisher's description). Includes Good Housekeeping (1885-2005), Ladies' Home Journal (1885-2005), Redbook (1903-2005), Better Homes & Gardens (1922-2005), Parents (1926-2005), and Chatelaine (1928-2005).
 
Focusing on the evolution of feminism throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the archive provides materials on women’s political activism, such as suffrage, birth control, pacifism, civil rights, and socialism, and on women’s voices, from female-authored literature to women’s periodicals.
 
Full text of pre-Victorian early modern women's writing. Currently has the electronic full text of over 200 texts from 1526 through 1850, a subset of which is Renaissance writers. The database will continue to grow in the coming years.

Judith and Warren Kaplan Women's and Gender Studies Collection

The Judith and Warren Kaplan Women's and Gender Studies Collection in the UCF Special Collections and University Archives houses a large collection of materials related to second-wave feminism (25.1 linear feet). Judith "Judy" Kaplan (1939-2024) joined the National Organization for Women (NOW) in the late 1960s, was active in NOW-NY, the founding chapter of NOW, and acted as fundraiser and treasurer. In the late 1970s she started Action Packets, later named Action Products International. From 1976-1980 she designed, produced and marketed the Women's History Series of First Day Covers by NOW-NY. In 1985 Judith became one of the first women to bring the company she founded public via an IPO on NASDAQ. Judy had started collecting first day covers about women's achievements and then added almost anything documenting women in history: postcards, books, autographed letters, original documents, and ephemera.

General Primary Source Databases

Provides the full text of articles, advertisements, illustrations, editiorial cartoons, obituaries, letters to the editor, etc., from more than 1,100 American magazines and journals published between 1741 and 1940. It includes special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines and many other historically significant periodicals. Articles are available as digitized images and therefore preserve the original typography, graphics, and page layout. The database allows searching by author, title, article type, publication title, date, and keywords in the full-text.
 
Offers facsimile page images and searchable full text for nearly 500 British periodicals published from the late seventeenth through the early twentieth centuries.
 
Based on Charles Evans' comprehensive American Bibliography (Main Library Reference Z 1215 .E92). The database makes available, in digital format, every book, pamphlet, and broadside published in the American colonies or the United States between 1639 and 1800 – in short, over 37,000 works. Among the range of publications included are advertisements, almanacs, bibles, catalogs, charters and by-laws, contracts, cookbooks, elegies, eulogies, laws, maps, narratives, novels, operas, plays, poems, primers, sermons, songs, speeches, textbooks, tracts, travelogues, and treaties. For assistance on identifying music in this database, see Donald L. Hixson's Music in Early America: A Bibliography of Music in Evans (Main Library General Collection ML 120 .U5 H6 1970).
 
"... Contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700" (publisher's description). When completed, this set will contain the full text of over 125,000 titles. Titles included are those listed in Pollard and Redgrave's A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, & Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475-1640 (Main Library Reference Z 2002 .P77 1976) and Wing's Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and British America, and of English Books Printed in Other Countries, 1641-1700 (Main Library Reference Z 2002 .W52), as well as the Thomason Tracts, 1640-1661 and the Early English Books Tract Supplement.
 
A nearly comprehensive collection of the works published in the English language (and non-English language works printed in the United Kingdom) during the eighteenth century, now comprising approximately 180,000 items. Includes poems, plays, novels, histories, travel books, parliamentary papers, parish registers, conduct books, cook books, and almanacs.
 
HarpWeek (1857-1912)
Provides full text and page images of Harper's Weekly, one of the most important serials of nineteenth-century America. A primary source for learning about nineteenth-century events, people, and culture in the United States.
 
A database of primary source collections for the nineteenth century, primarily British and American items, but including material from other nations and in other languages. NCCO is selective in coverage, including not all publications from the period, but eight thematic groupings of materials, called Archives, such as "British Theatre, Music, and Literature: High and Popular Culture."
 
Based on Joseph Sabin's famed bibliography, Bibliotheca Americana: A Dictionary of Books Relating to America from its Discovery to the Present Time (Main Library Reference Z 1201 .S2 1961). An online collection of books, pamphlets, serials, and other works about the Americas, from the time of their discovery in the 1400s to the early 1900s.

What is a Primary Source?

Generally speaking, primary sources are documents or physical objects written or created at the time historical events occurred or well after the events in the form of memoirs or oral histories. They serve as the raw materials researchers use to analyze and interpret the past.

Examples of primary sources in the arts and humanities can include, but are not limited to:

> autobiographies or memoirs
> clothing
> data sets
> diaries
> e-mails
> government documents
> interviews or oral histories
> legal documents
> letters
> manuscripts
> newspaper articles
> opinion polls
> photographs
> speeches

Tips for Locating Primary Sources in the UCF Libraries Catalog

The collections of the UCF Libraries include government documents, papers, speeches, oral histories, letters, diaries, photographs, and autobiographies collected in books and other formats. When performing a keyword search in Primo, the UCF Libraries catalog, include terms that describe primary sources such as:

> archives
> autobiography
> correspondence
> description and travel
> diaries
> documentary films
> exhibitions
> interviews
> manuscripts
> maps
> notebooks
> papers
> personal narratives
> pictorial works
> portraits
> public opinion
> songs and music
> sources
> speeches

Archival Resources

http://beta.worldcat.org/archivegrid/
A collection of over three million archival material descriptions, providing information available about historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and other archival materials. It also provides contact information for the institutions where the collections are kept.
 
National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC)
Main Library Reference Z 6620 .U5 N3
Frequently referred to by its title abbreviation, pronounced "nuck-muck." Makes available the contents of archival and manuscript collections in research libraries, museums, state archives, and historical societies located throughout North America. From 1959 to 1993, the contents of NUCMC were published in print volumes. Since 1986, bibliographic records created for NUCMC have been made available in electronic format and can now be searched online.