Women in the Library: Staff and students
In the late nineteenth century the increased hiring of female library employees and the granting of borrowing privileges to students of the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women (later, Radcliffe College) made the Library among the earliest places at Harvard to see the integration of women into the life of the University.
Materials concerning women's history within the Library include:
- [Petition] To the honorable, the president and fellows of Harvard College, 1864-1866. In: [Call number: UAI 5.130, Box 12]
- Note: This is a letter from three female Harvard College Library catalogers petitioning for an increase in salary. The letter is dated July 29, 1864. Their petition is seconded in an amendment to the letter written by Ezra Abbott, assistant librarian and superintendent of the Cataloging Department. The last page of the letter contains explanatory notes written by "Mr. Hill" (possibly Thomas Hill, President of Harvard) on Sept. 12, [1866?].
- This item is digitized and can be viewed online.
- The Records of William Coolidge Lane, Librarian of Harvard University, 1898-1928, [Call number: UAIII 50.8.10.2 Boxes 1-69]) include numerous documents pertaining women working in the Library:
- Petition for vacation. 1909 petition by female employees of the Library to receive paid vacation, which Lane supported. This item is found in: UAIII 50.8.10.2, Box 21, Folder 4
- Radcliffe College Library. Correspondence regarding use of the Harvard College Library by Radcliffe students and regarding female Library employees enrolling in classes at Radcliffe.These materials are found in: UAIII 50.8.10.2, Box 39, Folder 6
- William Coolidge Lane's "Staff file on women." This series of the Lane records contains subject files on female employees in the Library from 1898 to 1917, and is largely composed of correspondence between the employees and Lane regarding their positions, their qualifications, job duties performed or expected, evaluation of performance, and salaries. Files also sometimes contain information about the personal lives of these women, especially as it affected their work (such as travel plans and other reasons for time off), but also including clippings of marriage announcements, invitations, thank you notes, and other personal memorabilia. These materials are found in: UAIII 50.8.10.2, Box 68 Folder 5 through Box 69
- Cleaning women in the Library. A file on the "Women Cleaners" of the Library, noting their duties, schedules, and other information.This file is found in: UAIII 50.8.10.2, Box 53, Folder 1
- Useful secondary resources include:
- Mitchell, Barbara. "'A Beginning Is Made': The New Card Catalogue of the Harvard College Library and the Female Labor Force, 1856-1877". Harvard Library Bulletin. Vol. 14, No. 3 (Fall 2003).
- Faust, Drew. "Mingling Promiscuously: A History of Women and Men at Harvard” 2004 lecture by Drew Faust (President of Harvard University, 2007-2018)