Jewels from the Schlesinger Library
After its first 75 years, the Schlesinger Library's collections tell fresh stories of American history.
At the SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills, Jane Kamensky, the Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, presented an illustrated lecture in which she used objects from the Library’s collections to tell fresh stories about American history.
The Schlesinger Library began in August 1943, when the Radcliffe College alumna Maud Wood Park donated materials she had amassed in her work on behalf of women’s suffrage. The Radcliffe College Women’s Rights Collection comprised 30 cartons of manuscripts and 300 books and periodicals. In its first year of operation, the collection welcomed seven researchers. Today, the Schlesinger is the largest women’s history library in the United States and holds more than 4,000 manuscript collections, over 125,000 volumes, and troves of audiovisual materials. Thousands of researchers access the collection on site and online every year.
