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USING THE GENERAL COLLECTIONS SELECTED HOLDINGS
GENERAL COLLECTIONS EXTERNAL SITES VISIT/CONTACT |
Microform Materials
When researching any topic at the Library of Congress, ask a reference librarian for help in identifying microform collections on your subject. Examples of almost every type of material mentioned in this discussion of the General Collections also exist in microform. Microforms are found in most reading rooms, but the largest gathering is in the Microform Reading Room. Treasures abound, and the two keys to this richness are reference librarians and A Guide to the Microform Collections in the Humanities and Social Sciences Division of the Library of Congress (available online and in print). This guide is an alphabetical list with brief annotations of most collections held in the Microform Reading Room. Its index provides subject access to collections that often lack subject headings in the online catalog.
It is impossible to mention all titles that might assist a women's history researcher, but there are large collections on
Two major sets for historians are:
Because books and serials published before 1801 are kept in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, many works on colonial American women must be consulted there. The Microform Reading Room, however, holds Early American Imprints,3 two microform sets of most books, pamphlets, and broadsides printed in the United States between 1639 and 1819. These include many works by and about women from those early years, and they can be easily photocopied. More than 40 percent of the titles can be viewed in print copies in the Rare Book Reading Room. It cannot be emphasized strongly enough that there are marvelous unanticipated treats for historians of women (or any other subject) among the millions of frames in the Microform Reading Room. One collection reproduces several dozen photographs depicting Anglo and Hispanic American women in New Mexico between 1890 and 1924 [catalog record]. Another has more than sixty filmed works about the Salem witchcraft trials with descriptions of women's multiple roles in those events and accounts of individual trials [catalog record]. BIBLIOGRAPHY: The online version of A Guide to the Microform Collections in the Humanities and Social Sciences Division of the Library of Congress (Washington: Library of Congress) is updated regularly at <http://www.loc.gov/rr/microform/guide/ >. For collections cataloged before 1996, consult the print version in most reading rooms: Z1033.M5 L53 1996 [catalog record]. There is limited subject access for microform collections in the online catalog, and no online record exists for most individual items within such collections. Most guides to individual Microform Reading Room collections are shelved in the Main Reading Room reference-desk area. [Top] |
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