Library: College Archives
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Simmons College Archives
Collections and Resources
The Simmons College Archives collections reflect the unique professional character of the College and its early commitment to training women for the professions. To assist researchers, the College Archives has prepared a number of resources about its collections of College records, manuscript collections, photographs, historical books, and charitable organization materials. These resources are offered for reference purpose only; the staff of the College Archives is happy to provide further assistance to students, faculty, alumnae, and other interested researchers.
About the College Records
The Archival College Record Collections are comprised of records created by administrators, faculty, students, and alumnae in their various official capacities. The records are varied and range from the office files of a dean to records of student clubs to student papers to a photograph collection of approximately 15,000 images. The images reflect not only the Simmons campus and members of the College community throughout the twentieth century, but also changes in the Fenway neighborhood. Resort areas on Cape Cod, the North Shore, and the South Shore of Massachusetts, popular locations for student day trips throughout Simmons College history, are also depicted.
The records are organized in record groups (RG) under the names of academic and administrative departments. Institutional policy is such that some materials are limited to restricted use. These restrictions vary from collection to collection and researchers are urged to consult the College Archives for clarification.
A listing of Archval College Record collections is available.
About the Manuscript Collections
The Manuscript holdings at Simmons College document the history of Simmons College and women’s education through collections donated to, or on deposit to the Simmons College Archives. Personal papers, photographs, and memorabilia illustrate the lives of Simmons faculty, staff, students, and alumnae, both at the College and in their professional activities. Additional collections of individuals and organizations are acquired in areas of particular interest to the College, including social work and librarianship.
The collections are available to all members of the Simmons College community and other interested scholars and researchers. In accordance with institutional policy, parts or all of some collections may be restricted. Please consult the College Archives staff for further information.
A complete listing of manuscript collections is available.
About the Historical Book Collections
The historical book collections at Simmons College reflect the strong professional orientation of the College curriculum. Represented are mostly 19th and 20th century works relating to public health nursing, social work and social welfare, children's literature, household economics, and the history of the book. There are also selected works by members of the faculty and alumnae/i.
The Knapp Collection of Early Children's Books was begun with a gift from the Detroit Public Library in memory of Dorothy Elizabeth Knapp, Director of Children's Services in Detroit. She had been a Simmons College graduate student in 1903-04 and lectured in the library school during the 1920's. The collection contains over 1,200 19th and early 20th century juvenile books by American, English, and some European authors such as Jacob Abbott, Juliana Horatia Ewing, Louisa May Alcott, Martha Finley, and Horatio Alger. The runs of Saint Nicholas and Youth's Companion are typical of periodicals also found in the collection.
The 1,500 volumes of the Social Work Archives Collection include the Donald Moreland and Robert Ramsey collections of late 18th, 19th, and early 20th century European and American works on the topics of philanthropy, slum life and poverty, child labor and welfare, medical care of the mentally ill, crime, and slavery. Included are Una and Her Papers: Memorials of Agnes Elizabeth Jones by her sister, with a preface by Henry Ward Beecher and an introduction by Florence Nightingale (New York, 1872); Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, written by himself (Boston, 1845); and Voices from Prison: a selection of poetry written within the cell, by various prisoners, edited by Charles Spear (Boston, 1849).
About the Charities Collections
The Charities Collection contains annual reports, pamphlets, and sermons of private charities, public welfare agencies, and hospitals in Boston, throughout Massachusetts and the eastern United States, and England, from the 1790s to ca. 1950. This collection was created by the donation of the Boston Children's Aid Society's library to the Simmons College School of Social Work in 1911, to which the collection of Donald Moreland was later added.
The Charities Collection is organized by agency. Several agency collections have been processed and assigned a Charities Collection number (CC); finding aids for these collections are available; the majority of charities are unprocessed; while no finding aids are availalbe, these collections are arranged in an alphabetical listing of angencies' locations (i.e. Massachusetts, Boston or New York, Brooklyn), when known, and are available for researchers.
A complete list of Charities Collections is available. Contact the College Archives for more information.
Page updated: July 28, 2008
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