This academic year marks the 15th anniversary of the Iowa Women’s Archives, which was founded by Louise Noun and Mary Louise Smith. Two new online resources celebrate their vision: the Iowa Women’s Archives Founders Collection and the Iowa Women’s Archives Timeline. The Founders Collection includes a scrapbook that chronicles Smith’s early involvement in politics, which culminated in her appointment as chair of the Republican National Committee in 1974. Louise Noun’s scrapbooks document many aspects of her activism, including her leadership of the Iowa Civil Liberties Union.

These materials are part of the Iowa Women’s Archives Digital Collections, a new portal that provides access to the 1,400 Archives items in the Iowa Digital Library. The site allows users to browse by subject, time period or document type. It will be regularly updated with new items drawn from the IWA’s 1100 manuscript collections, which have provided valuable primary source materials for books, articles, theses and class projects…. 

“The Iowa Women’s Archives is a gem — not only for researchers, who can conduct research in a wide range of primary sources, including collections that represent the experiences of African-American and Latina Iowans — but also for teachers,” said Leslie Schwalm, associate professor of history at the UI. “Students in my American history and women’s history courses have found the Iowa Women’s Archives a wonderful gateway to the past and to the work of the historian. My undergraduate history majors gain a semester’s worth of learning in an hour spent at the Iowa Women’s Archives: they get to touch and read the letters and diaries and photographs that capture the American past. There is an excitement of discovery and of connection to the past that no textbook or lecture can convey. The Iowa Women’s Archives is one of my most valuable resources as a teacher at the University of Iowa.”

See the full press release here.