Students in a Bryn Mawr classroom, 1947

The Bryn Mawr Special Collections Department has just completed a two-year $260,000 grant project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. College Women: Documenting the History of Women in Higher Education funded the digitization of a wealth of student letters, diaries, scrapbooks and photographs, which are now publicly accessible through the online portal www.collegewomen.org.  In addition to Bryn Mawr, which was the lead institution on the grant, the project included the other schools in the old Seven Sisters group:  Barnard, Mount Holyoke, Smith, Vassar and Wellesley Colleges, and the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. As a result of the project, the institutions digitized more than 75,000 pages of documents from over 100 collections of student writings from the middle of the nineteenth century to World War II.

Field hockey players at Bryn Mawr, 1919

The seven partner institutions, historically regarded as the equivalent of the Ivy League before those schools admitted women, have long stood at the forefront of women’s higher education in the United States, educating many of the most ambitious, socially conscious, and intellectually curious women in the country. Going to college offered women new academic and social experiences, which many of them chronicled in extensive letter writing, diary-keeping, scrapbooking, and photography that preserved their impressions, experiences, and ambitions during those first years of independence from home. A treasure trove of these letters, diaries, scrapbooks and photographs have been preserved in the libraries of the seven schools, where they serve as a rich resource for understanding a wide range of issues in women’s history and beyond. College Women makes these collections available online, searchable together for the first time, making it possible for researchers to consider these materials in the larger context of movements for women’s education and expanded opportunities for women in general, and critical concerns experienced by young women growing into maturity in a changing world.

Students at tea in Wyndham, ca.1945

Among the writings found in College Women are the diaries of Bryn Mawr suffrage activist Mary Whitall Worthington, class of 1920; diaries of pioneer women archaeologists Dorothy Burr Thompson, class of 1923, and Lucy Shoe Merrit, class of 1927; letters of Marie Litzinger, class of 1920, who later taught Mathematics at Mt. Holyoke; and letters of Susan Walker Fitzgerald, class of 1893, who founded the Self-Government Association.

The College Women site also includes a blog with entries discussing interesting collections found through the project, guides to the use of the site, and ways in which the site can be used for teaching.  The project team welcomes blog posts from anyone who finds the site useful.

ABOUT THE PROJECT

This project began in the spring of 2014 with a Foundations Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support the development of an online portal capable of searching the institutions’ digital collections of student letters, diaries, scrapbooks and photographs.  A $260,000 implementation grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in the spring of 2016 allowed the partners to digitize and create metadata for thousands of documents, and those documents are now accessible through the Collegewomen.org site.

Interactive Mechanics LLC of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania has been responsible for site design and development. The project was advised by leading scholars in the fields of women’s history, history of education, women’s archives, and the digital humanities–Ellen Gruber Garvey (New Jersey City University), Helen Horowitz (Smith College), Mary Kelley (University of Michigan), Laura Mandell (Texas A&M University), Monica Mercado (Colgate University), Katherine Rowe (Smith College – and the incoming President of the College of William and Mary), Susan N. Tucker (Tulane University), and Nancy Woloch (Barnard College).

The project “College Women: Documenting the Student Experience at the Seven Sisters Colleges” is being supported by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Celebrating 50 Years of Excellence.   Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this project do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Eric Pumroy, Seymour Adelman Director of Special Collections, Bryn Mawr College, 101 N. Merion Avenue, Bryn Mawr, PA  19010. Tel: 610-526-5272; epumroy@brynmawr.edu

There have been a few upgrades to TriArte this summer that provide more information about individual objects and enable new ways for users to interact with the collections.

Provenience, Bibliography, Comparanda, and Catalogue Raisonné

1. Expanded Bibliographic Information

First, more information has been made available that expands upon the existing general information about the object itself in four new sections added to an item’s page. The history of ownership for the object leading up to its arrival at Bryn Mawr College is under Provenance History. Sources that have published about the object are included in the Bibliography List and the Catalogue Raisonné notes the authoritative publication. A Comparanda List provides references to objects that are considered similar to our examples. These new sections present some of the ongoing research to the general public that students, faculty, scholars, and staff have completed over the years.

Mapped Creation and Findspot Locations for P.93

2. Additional Map Features

Attic Black-Figure Kylix (Drinking Cup) Fragment (P.93)

Second, TriArte now maps data on both the creation and find spots for objects. On a map within the record, visitors can trace the journeys of exported vases or coins in circulation. For example, on the map above the Creation Location (Athens) and its eventual Findspot (Egypt) for the Attic Black-Figure Kylix Fragment with a Gorgoneion (P.93)  is indicated.

**It is exciting to note that these two sections are continuing to expand on a daily basis with additions and corrections.**

3. New Feature: Portfolios

A Portfolio of our favorites! Portraits of Bryn Mawr College Presidents.

Tagged: A wreath was once visible in the figure’s hand. It was likely removed during an aggressive cleaning prior to 1905.

Third, Students and Professors can now create their own “Portfolios” on TriArte. Similar to the existing portfolios under the Featured Collections tab, one can save a collection of objects that are of interest for a class or for a project. A quick email to collections (artandartifacts@brynmawr.edu) will provide you with a username with which you can login to your own version of TriArte and start creating portfolios. Students can collect a group of objects in a portfolio to examine for a paper on Byzantine coins or Daguerreotypes. Professors can plan out visits for their classes to collections or store objects of interest together for future research. Furthermore, portfolio users can “tag” part of an object with notes, such as on P.95 here.

So check out our new features on TriArte!

Hang on to your hat—and your head—for the next preview of the upcoming Halloween-themed “Friday Finds” talk!

Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow has it all: romance, the supernatural, and a healthy dose of biting satire, all this from one of the pillars of the first generation of great American authors. Irving, who spent many years abroad in Europe, was deeply affected by stories and traditions of the old world. However, he brought a distinctly American flair to these stories, both in setting and wry, satirical tone.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, where traditional European tales of headless riders and huntsmen are reinterpreted in the Hudson Valley, where the exoticism of the New York Dutch heritage met the eerie upstate wilderness of America. While the monstrous encounter between Ichabod Crane and the phantom horseman is ambivalent, what is certain is the enduring humor in the description of the calculating and manipulative, yet irrationally superstitious, schoolteacher who likely deserves his comeuppance.

Bryn Mawr’s illustrated copy of Washington Irving’s best-known and most-adapted work will be available for your perusal at “Eerie Books: A Halloween Selection from Special Collections,” on Friday, October 31st, from 3:00-4:00 pm in Room 205 of Canaday Library. Come and page through it and other spooky selections yourself—if you dare!

 Trick or treat at Special Collections! Come to the talk in costume, and you may win a gift certificate to Main Point Books. Everyone will be welcome to treats to follow the talk!

Remember these?

As new technologies appear, older ones become obsolete, making it difficult to access older content. Traditional information sources such as books, photos and sculptures can easily survive for years, decades or even centuries but digital items are fragile and require special care to keep them useable.

• Digital items are fragile and require special care to preserve them and keep them usable.

• Digital items depend on technology to make them available.

• Digital content requires active management to ensure its ongoing accessibility.

• Online programs (Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, etc.) have no guarantees to last forever.

Come to Personal Digital Archiving Day to learn how to save your digital materials long-term on October 23rd from 3-5 in Canaday 205.

Adapted from: http://digitalpreservation.gov/multimedia/videos/personalarchiving.html

 “There has never been anything real about my life over here. I can’t believe that it is I who am seeing it with my eyes, living in something that is a reality and not a dream. It worries me sometimes for I am afraid it will disappear out of my memory like a dream and I just don’t know what to do to hold on to it” (84-5). This is one of Margaret Hall’s more poignant moments as she reflects on her service for the Red Cross during World War I. Her experience so strongly affected her that she compiled her correspondence and photographs into a typed bound manuscript: Letters and Photographs from the Battle Country, 1918 and 1919 . I had the opportunity to read an original copy. As a recently graduated history major/nerd, I was excited to actually hold the historic manuscript and learn about WWI through the eyes of Margaret Hall.

July 28, 2014 marks the 100^th anniversary of the beginning of the Great War, so it is appropriate that the Massachusetts Historical Society currently has an exhibition, “Letters and Photographs From the Battle Country: Massachusetts Women in the First World War,” featuring Hall’s writings. There are only four known copies of Margaret Hall’s book. Bryn Mawr College Special Collections, the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Cohasset Historical Society each own one. World War I does not occupy a particularly large space in US popular culture, especially when compared to World War II. Movies like Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List or Patton are widely considered classic American films. Speaking for my generation, our little knowledge of World War I comes from the novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, primarily because it is required reading in many high schools. I have always thought WWI fascinating as its own historical moment, not just simply a precursor to WWII.

Margaret Hall graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1899 with a degree in history. She came from a relatively well-to-do family in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1915, she helped organize nationwide marches for women’s suffrage. In 1917, according to Bryn Mawr’s Alumnae Quarterly, she traveled to Cuba and the Isle of Pines and later that year started her own farm. Then, on August 23, 1918 Hall sailed across the submarine strewn Atlantic Ocean into the deadly combat zone of Marne, France. I was curious to know why she did this but unfortunately, she does not expand upon what precisely influenced her decision. Perhaps she felt a sense of duty or wanted adventure. Of course, we will never know but it is certain that she was a strong-willed woman who was not intimidated by the unknown.

Once Margaret arrived in Paris, she was assigned to a desk job that required her to read casualty reports and letters. Then she would have to write families “about the boys’ last words, what they did and said, their funerals, etc.” (18). Hall found this incredibly depressing and desired to work at a canteen near the frontlines: “I have no hopes of getting near the front. The Red Cross does not send women near, they tell me…Salvation Army is what I want and I wish to goodness I had tried for it.” (17) But, like a true Mawrter, she persisted and ultimately was assigned to the Chalons-sur-Marne, “Cantine des Deux Drapeaux.” This Red Cross canteen in the St. Mihiel sector was literally on the front lines of World War 1 and Hall arrived just in time for the last major battle of the war. She and others at the canteen often had to take cover in the local abris, underground caves. Near the end of the war, Hall writes on November 1, 1918: “The guns are banging away at the front. It is much farther away, but we can still hear them, and they always disturb one’s nervous system. We’ve got the hardest part of the line near us, where there is terrific fighting and terrific mortality. Everyone from the front says the same thing, that it is awful up there. Think of being so near to it that we can hear it thundering on!” (83-4). The fighting was not the only peril – disease ran rampant in the canteen. Margaret was ill several times but luckily survived while many other women died from the Spanish flu.

While reading her letters, I asked myself if I could do what she did and honestly, I’m still unsure. For a year, she lived a life completely different than anything she had ever known and for the first time, she encountered Algerians, “Anamites” (Vietnamese), Poles, “a real American Indian”, among others. There were food rations, she had little sleep or privacy, and saw countless dead and wounded soldiers. I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been to adjust to this environment. But, as Margaret points out, the four-year war made miserable conditions the norm and the end brought anything but peace: “Discontent is rampant in all branches of the service and among all nations. It’s a most deplorable ending to the four-years of agony. Not one definite thing accomplished, Allies loving each other less than ever” (178).

As an amateur photographer myself, I was particularly taken with Margaret’s pictures throughout her narrative. She snuck her camera past Paris customs, allowing her to capture hundreds of scenes from the Western front. Visually documenting the war was clearly very important to her: “One of the things most wearing to me is the desire to get out to take pictures, and the impossibility of doing it. I know I could get such wonderful things” (160). Keep in mind; she was using an ‘old-fashioned’ film camera. I can’t know for sure, but it is highly likely she used a Vest Pocket Kodak camera, which was introduced in 1912. As the name suggests, it was small enough to fit in a pocket, which might explain how she managed to smuggle her camera past customs. One roll of film, at maximum, could take sixteen pictures and she took many more than that. This means that Margaret would have had to find a pitch black area to change film rolls or else the negatives would be ruined. Speaking from experience, removing film is not the easiest thing to do and it definitely takes practice. Or, she could have had someone else do it for her. Regardless, it is interesting to really think about the physical process of photography in 1917 and the thought that was put into each picture she took.

I learned a lot about Margaret by looking at her pictures; they show what and who she thought was worth photographing. Hall was both fascinated and horrified by the amount of destruction due to the fighting: “In the afternoon we walked to the little town of Courteau, all shelled up and as picturesque as the dickens” (129). The majority of her photographs are scenes of desolate land, abandoned weapons, destroyed buildings and graves. Many of her photos are artistically well composed and there are also candid shots of Allie solders and German prisoners. Margaret looked at the war from all angles and it is amazing to have such a dynamic collection of photographs all in one book.

I was quite struck by her response to corpses and demolished towns or buildings. She often described these scenes as “picturesque,” which I understand as there is allure in the grotesque. But, her description of the looting she did with other women from the canteen and the treatment of German bodies show a level of desensitization. “On our way down, found a dugout in which were ten or twelve Germans who had been gassed…It seemed only musty down there, not really disagreeable at all…Their hands were mummified, but you could almost see the muscles in their broad shoulders. Probably the gas, and being so far down away from the air, had preserved them. Don’t know how I ever could have gone into such a place. The only reason must be because they were our enemies and you don’t feel the same about them as you do about anything else in the world” (223). I think Margaret was surprised by her actions as well but accepted them rather than changed them. I thought that this looting expedition was particularly disturbing: “I am going to find a Boche prisoner now to fix up my souvenirs. Two women of the canteen are taking skulls as ‘souvenirs,’ and some of the nurses pull belts and boots off of dead Germans. Sometimes the feet come off in the boots, but that seems to be no objection!” (178). Not only was looting disrespectful to the dead, it was also extremely perilous: “People are killed and injured all the time for hunting souvenirs” because the abandoned trenches and battlefields were littered with hand grenades and other explosives. Plus, these women were traveling into foreign lands with people they met along the way. But, Hall maintained this mentality: “But why be here in the midst of it and not see it, even if it kills you in the end!” (135). Or as we would say today, #YOLO.

Hall describes a conversation with a German prisoner that is an eerily accurate prediction for the future: “The Germans say, ‘Just wait six years.’ I think they have no intention of remaining a conquered nation longer than that” (153). He [German boy] is convinced that he will go home in a month or two at most, or else the war will begin again. Germany will have her prisoners back, he says. He’s a nice, industrious boy, but German, and they can never be changed; they will always wish to push their Kultur onto others. He told us their government was the best, and we’d all have to come to it sooner or later. I really felt quite hopeless after I’d talked to him” (158). This anecdote sent chills down my spine because we now know this solder’s declarations soon became a reality. Seven years after the war ended, Adolf Hitler published Mein Kampf and then became Chancellor of Germany in 1933. The rest, as they say, is history.

Elizabeth Reilly, Class of 2014