Women's history digital primary source collections

Abstract

Purpose – ‐‐ The aim of this article is to locate and describe collections of digitized primary sources of value to scholars and librarians in the fields of women's history and gender studies. This bibliography focuses on digitized primary source collections related to the global history of women.Design/methodology/approach ‐‐ This article provides an overview of subscription databases and open access websites dedicated to women's history primary source collections available electronically. Priority was given to sites with materials or transcriptions available in English, those that represented a diversity of aspects within women's history and those that are curated by scholars in the field or supported by academic institutions. Two major criteria for inclusion in the list were that a large portion of the collection must focus on women's history and that the site could be navigated in English.Findings ‐‐ The majority of these collections are focused mainly on the history of American and British women and secondarily on the history of women from other cultures and global regions. While some primary sources have been digitized and made available online relating to Asian, African, South American and Latin American women's history, they appear as part of more general regional primary source collections.Originality/value ‐‐ Though there are a number of excellent librarian or scholar web guides available online, a thorough examination and comparison is lacking from professional literature.