A History of Women’s Lives
Collection Highlights Reality Versus Stereotypes
(June 2015 issue)
Penn State Harrisburg’s archivist and
humanities reference librarian, as well
as coordinator of archives and special collections,
Heidi Abbey Moyer curates one of
the largest, privately compiled collections of
women’s history in the country.
The Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection
is named for Alice Kahler Marshall
(1923–1997), a local journalist, researcher,
and avid collector, who was fascinated by
the “contradictions between the realities of
women’s lives and the stereotypes of women’s
behavior.” The collection, compiled over
50 years, encompasses material on all areas
of women’s lives from the 15th century to the
early 1980s. It contains thousands of items,
including pamphlets, sheet music, diaries,
posters, postcards, and photographs.
“Not many people can say that they truly
love their job, but I can,” Moyer says. “Over
the past eight years, rarely a day goes by
that I don’t discover something new and
exciting in the collection, such as our rare
series of vinegar valentines, a handwritten
letter by Susan B. Anthony, or the wealth of
other paper ephemera that Alice collected
about the history of women’s suffrage in
America.”