As the Iowa Digital Library approaches the 100,000-item mark, we’re celebrating this milestonetemp by highlighting some of our favorite items from the collections.

Title: Supersisters trading cards, 1979
Creator: Supersisters
Collection: Iowa Women’s Archives Founders Digital Collection

In 1978, Lois Rich was asked by her 8-year-old daughter, a baseball card collector, why there weren’t any pictures of girls on the cards. By the following year, Rich had sought out and received grant funding from educational organizations to create the Supersisters trading card set, featuring 72 feminist heroines. With subjects ranging from puppeteer Shari Lewis to politician (and future IWA co-founder) Mary Louise Smith, the cards have been dismissed by some modern-day pundits as a “noble but misguided” project (“It’s sort of hard to imagine kids getting excited about them — ‘Hey, I’ll trade you two Bella Abzugs for a mint Shirley Chisolm!'”). However, I find them a fascinating artifact documenting the areas in which women were — and weren’t — making progress during the second wave of feminism.

–Sarah Dorpinghaus
Digitization Specialist, Digital Library Services