Name of repository
Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America

Address
Radcliffe Institute
Harvard University
10 Garden Street
Cambridge, MA 02138

Contact
Diana Carey

Telephone
617-495-8540

Fax
617-496-8340

Email
slref@radcliffe.edu


Description of the Schlesinger Library
The Schlesinger Library’s holdings document American women's lives and women's issues currently and retrospectively. Especially well represented are suffrage and women's rights, social reform, family history, health and sexuality, work and professions, culinary history, and gender issues. The library, which includes the Radcliffe Archives, holds over 2,200 manuscript collections, and more than 75,000 published materials such as books, periodicals, videotapes, and audiotapes.
http://www.radcliffe.edu/schles

Description of Image Holdings
The Schlesinger Library’s photographs total more than 70,000 images and represent the work of both professional and amateur photographers. Most are acquired with manuscript collections; some arrive as separate photograph collections. They document the spectrum of activities and experiences that have made up women’s lives in the 19th and 20th centuries. Especially well represented are women’s rights and suffrage, social reform, family history, and women in the professions, government service, and the labor movement. They document the lives of both famous and little-known women. There are formal and informal portraits of individuals and family groups, pictures of women at work, or demonstrating for suffrage or other causes, images documenting women’s organizations, political and cultural events, and material culture.

What’s in VIA?
In VIA there are over 20,000 records describing over 36,000 images from Schlesinger Library manuscript and photograph collections, representing close to 50% of the library's estimated total photograph holdings.

How we use VIA
Each Schlesinger Library “work” record in VIA represents an original image. The majority of Schlesinger Library VIA records are cataloged fully on an item, or “work,” level; however, within a collection, some sets of photographs documenting the same people, events, subjects and locations may be cataloged together as a VIA “group” record. A “group” record is used to cluster similar or related images that can be described together concisely and to greater purpose than separately. For example, many portraits of the same woman can be collectively described in a single “group” record; photographs that lack individual distinction but share certain elements in common with other images in a folder, or photographs whose significance is really evident only when viewed alongside other related photographs, may be cataloged together in “group” records. Each photograph in a “group” record always has its own “work” record.

Photograph cataloging is based on the subject matter of the image itself, which is often different from subjects that appear in the accompanying manuscript collection. Materials and techniques headings are less specific than those applied by other repositories, which reflects the Schlesinger Library’s interest in the historical content of an image rather than the physical characteristics of the photograph itself.

Permissions
The digital copy of any Schlesinger Library image found in VIA is for personal use only, and may not be sold, loaned, copied or published without the express permission of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.

Reproduction
For any use of this image in any medium, please contact the Schlesinger Library.

Copyright
The President and Fellows of Harvard College make no representation that they are the owner of the copyright; any researcher wishing to make such use of the image must therefore assume all responsibility for clearing reproduction rights and for any infringement of Title 17 of the United States Code.