Location: 7 Neilson Drive, Smith College, Northampton, MA 01063
Contact: 413-585-2910, e-mail: libraryhelp@smith.edu
Website address: https://www.smith.edu/libraries/special-collections/about/sophia-smith-collection-womens-history
The Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College is an internationally recognized repository of manuscripts, archives, photographs, periodicals and other primary sources in women’s history. Today, the Collection consists of over 700 collections (over 10,700 linear feet) of material in manuscript, print, and audiovisual formats. The holdings document the historical experience of women in the United States and abroad from the colonial era to the present. Subject strengths include birth control and reproductive rights, women’s rights, suffrage, the contemporary women’s movement across race, class, and sexual orientation, U.S. women working abroad, the arts (especially theatre), the professions (especially journalism and social work), and middle-class family life in nineteenth- and twentieth-century New England. Many of these collections are rich sources of visual, as well as manuscript and printed material. One of the strengths of the collection, Reproductive Rights and Women’s Health, includes the personal papers of leaders in the birth control movement, such as Margaret Sanger.