In this Issue
Fall Conference Report:
Virtual, Digital, and Funded
New England Economic
Information Online
The Scholarly Web Site
A Visit to the Worcester
Women's History Project
News from NEBIC
Announcements
ACRL/NEC Spring 2000
Conference
NETSL Spring 2000
Conference
ITIG Presents
"Emerging
Technology in Libraries"
Return to the
Masthead
ACRL New England
Chapter News Online
Winter 2000, No. 89
WSIG Fall Program on the Worcester
Women's History Project
Chris Smith
Boston University
The Worcester Women's History Project (WWHP) was founded
in 1994 to raise awareness of the importance of the first
national Women's Rights Convention, held in Worcester on
October 23-24, 1850, and to highlight Worcester's role in
the development of the early women's rights movement. On
October 29, 1999, the ACRL/NEC Women's Studies Interest
Group met at Assumption College in Worcester to learn more
about the WWHP
(http://www.assumption.edu/html/academic/history/WWHP/front.html).
Holy Cross sociology professor Carolyn Howe, president of
the WWHP, introduced the WWHP and its goals and activities.
These include the recent unveiling of portraits of four
notable Worcester County women (Clara Barton, Dorothea Dix,
Abby Kelley Foster, and Lucy Stone) in Mechanics Hall, the
establishment of a Worcester Women's History Heritage Trail,
teacher workshops, a Web site, and a three-day conference
(Women 2000) to be held in October 2000.
Professor Howe gave a slide presentation on the 1850 first
National Women's Rights Convention. The convention drew more
than 1000 people, men and women, black and white, who heard
such speakers as Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth,
William Lloyd Garrison, Lucretia Mott, Abby Kelley Foster,
and Lucy Stone. The convention brought together the concepts
of race and gender. A final resolution of the convention
read, "Resolved, That the cause we are met to advocate, the
claim for woman of all her natural and civil rights, bids us
remember the million and a half of slave women at the South,
the most grossly wronged and foully outraged of all women;
and in every effort for an improvement in our civilization,
we will bear in our heart of hearts the memory of the
trampled womanhood of the plantation, and omit no effort to
raise it to a share in the rights we claim for
ourselves."
Assumption College history professor John McClymer, who is
the author of a book on the 1850 convention (This High
and Holy Moment: The First National Woman's Rights
Convention, Worcester, 1850. San Diego: Harcourt Brace
College, 1999), showed Women's Studies Interest Group
members what resources were available on the Women's
History Workshop Web Page
(http://www.assumption.edu/whw/).
Funded by an NEH grant, "the Women's History
Workshop is a collaborative effort of Massachusetts
teachers--middle school through college--which seeks to make
available primary sources in pedagogically imaginative
formats for teachers who wish to use such materials in their
own classrooms." Topics include fashion and dress reform,
popular music, children’s literature, and the origins
of the women’s rights movement.
On October 20-22, 2000, the WWHP will hold a conference
entitled Women 2000, which will include a
dramatization of the 1850 convention and a contemporary
conference with workshops and keynote events (including a
keynote address by Jill Ker Conway and a panel on the
resources of the Schlesinger Library and the Sophia Smith
Collection).
The Women's Studies Interest Group welcomes ideas on future
programming from ACRL/NEC members. If you have ideas for
programs or have women's studies-related resources on your
campus or in your community that may be of interest to WSIG
members, please contact the co-chairs: Christina Bellinger
(christina.bellinger@unh.edu),
Sarah Mitchell
(smitchel@mit.edu), or
Chris Smith
(jchris@bu.edu).