At a customer lunch on Saturday, electronic publisher ProQuest offered some insight into the wealth of primary source materials in the company’s digital History Vault resource. ProQuest Manager of Customer Service and Training Andrea Sevetson detailed several modules in the History Vault that can be used in women’s studies—some of it from not-so-obvious sources. Over the next few years, the company plans to add more than 15 modules containing 442 collections and 9.3 million pages.
Sevetson noted that the recently added “Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Personal Papers” includes the papers of civil rights leader Mary McCloud Methune (1875–1955)—president of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs and founder and president of the National Council of Negro Women—and contains a wealth of information on Black women’s rights. Similarly, modules in the NAACP Papers Collection provide information on women involved with the association and its activities (right).
Another key module that will be launched in 2013 is the Women’s Studies Manuscript Collections, which offers primary documents on voting rights, national politics, and reproductive rights from the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College. The papers of key national leaders like Julia Ward Howe, Anna Howard Shaw, and Matilda Gage are included.
The History Vault’s capability to search for subjects, persons, organizations, events, and keywords across modules makes it a flexible tool for identifying such interdisciplinary topics as women’s history. Results can be sorted by relevance, date, or accession number.
ProQuest will be offering free trials of the resource in February during Black History Month.
