Recent CU Library acquisitions enhance women's studies programs

By Elizabeth Fontana

What do Elizabeth Cady Stanton's The Woman's Bible, the papers of Cornell physicist Barbara Hope Cooper, audio tapes from the Ithaca Feminist Radio Collective and the records of Firebrand Books have in common? They are just a few of the many items Cornell University Library acquired over the past year that strengthen its collections in women's history.

March is Women's History Month, and the library is using this opportunity to make more visible its ongoing support for women's studies programs at Cornell. The exhibition now on view in Kroch Library, Women in the Literary Marketplace 1800-1900, highlights the library's growing collection of Victorian novels by women. Thanks to a diligent acquisitions initiative, Cornell's rare book collection now holds more than 1,500 of these books, including many titles not found in any other research library.

"We've made an extra effort in recent years to collect primary resources for the study of women's history," said Katherine Reagan, the library's curator of rare books, "especially in the areas of 19th- and 20th-century literature and the activism and reform movements of that period." To further increase access to this genre, the library also purchases all available modern reprints of Victorian novels, and these can be checked out.

The cover of the Dutch translation of Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg, one of the most influential works published by Firebrand Press. Winner of the Lambda Literary Award and the American Library Association's Lesbian/Gay Book Award, Feinberg's semi-autobiographical novel brought transgender issues widely into the public arena when it was published in 1993.

Students and scholars interested in women's history and gender issues will find a treasure trove of comprehensive and specialized resources in Cornell's libraries. Mann Library received a grant last year from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to make more widely available its extensive holdings in the history of home economics. Librarians are currently identifying 1,500 of the most important items published before 1925, which will be digitized and made accessible in full text on the web (see http://chlhe.mannlib.cornell.edu). This rare material documents a discipline that brought science into the home and women into higher education and leadership positions in public education, academia, government and industry. Staff members in the library's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections also worked together with Professor Joan Jacobs Brumberg and undergraduates in her human development course, Archival Research: Exploring the History of Home Economics, to produce last year's exhibition "From Domesticity to Modernity: What Was Home Economics?" and the corresponding web site http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/homeEc.

The library collects material to provide comprehensive coverage of 20th-century and current literature that relates to women's studies and continues to acquire historic material and unique primary sources, such as women's diaries and letters, ephemera from political movements and records of feminist organizations. The University Archives, housed in Kroch Library, also collects primary sources that document the experiences of women students, faculty and staff at Cornell. For example, the Archives recently received the papers of the late Barbara Hope Cooper '76, the first woman appointed professor of physics at Cornell in 1983. The collection chronicles the education and career of a promising young scientist, whose life was tragically cut short in 1999. The papers came as a gift of her husband, Christopher R. Myers, and the Department of Physics.

Last summer, the library received an outstanding collection of material documenting the history of American women's suffrage. A gift from Cornellians Jon A. and Virginia M. Lindseth, both from the class of 1956, the collection contains more than 500 items, including rare books, periodicals, pamphlets, letters, cartoons, photographs, banners, campaign buttons and other objects.

Also housed in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections in Kroch Library, Cornell's Human Sexuality Collection was established in 1988 with a broad mandate to record and preserve the cultural and political aspects of sexuality. In addition, Brenda Marston, curator of the collection, selects and purchases new material that supports and enhances the university's Women's Studies Program.

One of the few of its kind in the world, the Human Sexuality Collection has been enriched recently by a number of important additions. Last year the library acquired the extensive records of Firebrand Books, a publisher of lesbian- and feminist-centered books, from its founder, Nancy Bereano. Established in 1984 in Ithaca, Firebrand is best known for publishing Dorothy Allison's first books, including her award-winning 1988 novel, Trash. The collection features correspondence with Allison and other authors, including Audre Lorde, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Mab Segrest, Alison Bechdel, Ruthann Robson, Lesléa Newman and Leslie Feinberg. "The Firebrand papers are a tremendously rich resource on the connection between a political movement and cultural expression," said Marston. "Bereano was at the forefront of lesbian and small press publishing for 16 years," she added, and the records document the development and communication of feminist ideas and the relationship between artists and publishers.

Last December local residents Leni Hochman and Judy Scherer and other members of the Ithaca Feminist Radio Collective donated to Cornell the entire history of their weekly radio show, "Being Ourselves," which aired on WVBR-FM from 1976 to 1998. The compilation includes production files as well as the final reel-to-reel tapes of the radio shows. These materials chronicle the issues feminists grappled with over the past two decades and are of great interest to scholars of grassroots feminism and collectives.

Faculty often play a crucial role in building the library's collections. Martha Fineman, the Dorothea S. Clarke Professor of Feminist Jurisprudence and director of the Feminism and Legal Theory Project, brought Dell Williams and Robin Burdulis to campus last semester. Williams founded the first feminist sex boutique in New York City in 1974, and Burdulis teaches about women's sexuality at the Weill Cornell Medical College and other medical colleges in New York City. While they were here, both educators decided to donate their papers to the library.

For more information on Cornell Library's rare book collections, contact Katherine Reagan at 255-3530 or kr33@cornell.edu . For more information about the Human Sexuality Collection or women's studies resources in the library, contact Brenda Marston at 255-3530 or bjm4@cornell.edu.