An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials – in any medium – or the physical facility in which they are located.
An archivist is an information professional who assesses, collects, organizes, preserves, maintains control over, and provides access to records and archives determined to have long-term value. The records maintained by an archivist can consist of a variety of forms, including letters, diaries, logs, other personal documents, government documents, sound and/or picture recordings, digital files, or other physical objects.
Florence Rena Sabin was an American medical scientist. She was a pioneer for women in science; she was the first woman to hold a full professorship at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the first woman elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and the first woman to head a department at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. During her years of retirement, she pursued a second career as a public health activist in Colorado, and in 1951 received the Albert Lasker Public Service Award for this work.
The Society of American Archivists is the oldest and largest archivist association in North America, serving the educational and informational needs of more than 5,000 individual archivist and institutional members. Established in 1936, the organization serves upwards of 6,200 individual and member institutions.
Mary Ritter Beard was an American historian, author, women's suffrage activist, and women's history archivist who was also a lifelong advocate of social justice. As a Progressive Era reformer, Beard was active in both the labor and women's rights movements. She also authored several books on women's role in history including On Understanding Women (1931), America Through Women's Eyes, and Woman as Force in History: A Study in Traditions and Realities (1946), her major work. In addition, she collaborated with her husband, historian Charles Austin Beard, as coauthor of seven textbooks, most notably The Rise of American Civilization (1927), two volumes, and America in Midpassage: A Study of the Idea of Civilization (1939) and The American Spirit (1942), the third and fourth volume of The Rise of American Civilization series. A standalone book, Basic History of the United States, was their best-selling work.
Sophia Smith founded Smith College in 1870 with the substantial estate she inherited from her father, who was a wealthy farmer, and six siblings.
Kate Clifford Larson is an American historian and Harriet Tubman scholar. Her 2003 biography of Harriet Tubman, Bound for the Promised Land was one of the first non-juvenile Tubman biographies published in six decades. Larson is the consultant for the Harriet Tubman Special Resource Study of the National Park Service and serves on the advisory board of the Historic Context on the Underground Railroad in Delaware, Underground Railroad Coalition of Delaware.
Archival processing is the act of surveying, arranging, describing, and performing basic preservation activities on the recorded material of an individual, family, or organization after they are permanently transferred to an archive. A person engaging in this activity is known as an archival processor, archival technician, or archivist.
The Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College is an internationally recognized repository of manuscripts, photographs, periodicals and other primary sources in women's history.
Grierson is a surname of Scottish origin. The name is possibly a patronymic form of the personal name Grier or Grere, which may have reflected the Scots pronunciation of Gregor. The earliest known spellings are Grersoun and Greresoun. It was common practice in SW Scotland, particularly in the 16th and 17th centuries, for the name to be abbreviated to Grier, and there are many instances of the two forms being used in reference to the same man in the same document. This usage was further modified to Greer by a cadet branch of the Lag family who migrated to Ireland.
Margaret Cross Norton served as the first State Archivist of Illinois from 1922 to 1957 and co-founded the Society of American Archivists in 1936, where she served as the first vice president from 1936–1937 and president from 1943–1945. She also served as editor of the American Archivist from 1946–1949. Norton was posthumously recognized in the December 1999 American Libraries article naming "100 of the most important leaders we had in the 20th century" for her influence on the archival profession.
The Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies is a collection of LGBT historical materials housed in the Special Collections and Rare Books section of the University of Minnesota Libraries. It is located underground in the Elmer L. Andersen special collections facilities on the University of Minnesota's Minneapolis campus. The Tretter Collection houses over 40,000 items, making it the largest LGBT archive in the Upper Midwest and one of the largest GLBT history collections in the United States. The collection is international in scope and is varied in media.
Lucius Seymour Storrs was a geologist, financier, and notable railway official. He was president of the Connecticut Company, the American Electric Railway Association, the Los Angeles Railway Association, and the New England Investment and Security Company.
Margaret Storrs Grierson was an American archivist, philosophy professor, and the founder and first director of the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College. In this capacity, she traveled extensively, in the United States and abroad, assembling manuscripts that document the history of women.
Dorothy Hamilton Brush was a birth control advocate, women's rights advocate and author. She worked with Margaret Sanger and the birth control movement and wrote plays, travel articles, and books
Nina Eliza Browne was an American librarian and archivist. She was employed as a librarian at Harvard University and Boston Athenæum, a registrar at American Library Association, and an archivist at Smith College. She invented a charging system, known as the Browne Issue System, for libraries by 1895. She was a member, secretary, and publishing board member of the American Library Association, and was a member of the Massachusetts Library Association.
Anke Voss-Hubbard is an archivist, writer and feminist.
World Center for Women's Archives was an organization established by Rosika Schwimmer and Mary Ritter Beard in the hopes of creating an educational collection which women could consult to learn about the history of women. The center was located in the Biltmore Hotel at 41 Park Avenue in New York City. It closed in 1940, but the efforts made to establish a center to collect records encouraged several colleges and universities to begin develop similar archives of women's history. It was one of the earliest efforts to collect women's documents in the United States, predated the first accredited women's studies course in the U.S by 34 years, and preserved materials about women which otherwise might have been lost. It also redefined the way that historical documents were selected for archival inclusion. By changing what documents were noteworthy, using personal records to shape public history, the Women's Archive legacy was foundational to the development of feminist theory.
Valerie Gerrard Browne is an archivist. She has served with many institutions and has focused on collections of women. She is the daughter-in-law of artist Archibald Motley, Jr. (1891-1981) and serves as the caretaker of his legacy.
