The Annual Report has not been located. We have pieced together the activities from other sources.

 

Boston Women's Health Book Collective, September 28, 1994.

WSIG members met at the BWHBC's library for a tour and presentation. BWHBC librarians Jamie Penney and Cindy Irvine described the Women's Health Information Center collection. The collection contains material on women's health and the impact of various social systems on women's health. The scope is international, and material is collected in four formats: articles, books, periodicals, and audiovisual materials.

 

Lining the walls of the library are the beautifully maintained vertical files, which contain articles culled from various journals and arranged by subject. The vertical files are the most heavily used part of the library. Staff are now cataloging every article. using Inmagic, and have compiled a detailed table of contents for the vertical files, listing what types of subjects they do/do not contain.

 

The book collection contains over 5,000 items which are arranged in broad subject categories in open stacks. Many of the books are in Spanish; none of the books circulate. Over 200 periodical titles are held in the collection; they are arranged alphabetically by title. Videos in the collection are shown during library hours or are screened at other locations, such as local food coops.

 

The Library is open on Tuesdays, from 2:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., and Thursdays, from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. The phone information line (617/625-0271) is also available during these times. The BWHBC is a member of the Women and health Documentation center & Network and cooperates extensively with other women's health networks around the world.

 

Much of the discussion focused on sources of funding. The BWHBC is funded by royalties from Our Bodies, Ourselves and private donations. The entire collective has 10-12 people on staff; two are librarians. Within the BWHBC budget, the library has its own budget with lines for subscriptions and acquisitions. They would like to seek funding for additional library staff in the future.

 

Another issue for the future is the BWHBC archives, The Women's health Information Center is not an archival collection, and there is discussion as to what to do with the historical material in the collection.

 

 

 

Preserving 19th Century Women's Literature, December 15, 1994.

WSIG members met with Marion Taylor, Preservation Review Librarian at the Harvard College Library, for a discussion on the challenges of preservation. To our pleasant surprise, Marion had gotten together a panel of preservationists to talk about aspects of caring for non-book materials. The three panelists were: Robin McElheny, Projects Librarian, Harvard University Library Preservation Office; Lisa Biblo, Preservation Information Librarian, Harvard University; and T. Rose-Holdcraft, Conservator, Peabody Museum, Harvard University.

 

Marion Taylor gave a general overview of preservation concerns, techniques, and emergency procedures. Both she and Lisa Biblo hold seminars for every employee on the proper handling of books.

 

Robin McElheny works with curators and librarians to develop preservation projects that can be run cooperatively, then looks for funding. Robin worked with the photographic collections; all of Schlesinger's photographs are now on microfilm She stressed evaluating the importance of the subjects, and not to separate the media from the subjects.

 

Lisa Biblo spoke about magnetic media, noting that we are storing larger amounts of information on shorter-lasting media. Harvard is digitizing books, building in a four-year refresh date. The Judaica poster collection is being reformatted into slides, which are then being converted into Kodak photo CD's.

 

T Rose-Holdcraft wowed us with before-and-after slides of objects from the Peabody Museum, noting that they deal with unique objects that cannot be reformatted. Still, some of the problems of preservation concern the same materials as books, such as fabric and fibers which have a cellulose base.

 

 

Henry A. Murray Research Center: A Center for the Study of Lives, March 23, 1995.

Twelve WSIG members had a fascinating visit with Kathy Moraist, Senior Research Assistant, and Jan Malley, Research Associate, at the Murray Research Center at Radcliffe College. They described the Murray center as a "recycling center" for social and behavioral science data, where people who have written books or done research donate their data to the Center. New researchers then have access to this data and can manipulate it in new ways.

 

Kathy and Jan described the organization, access, and use of the data sets. The Murray Center publishes a guide to the data (free to libraries), with abstracts describing exactly what the data is, whether it be an interview or longitudinal study. In the "User Room," researchers can look at binders that describe each data set, how the material was collected and what tests were used. There is also information about the agreement between the contributor of the data to the Center as well as what the subjects of the studies originally agreed to, with consent forms. Here also, researchers will find any restrictions placed on using the measures again, whether one needs permission, what other people may have done with this same data and how it's been previously published.

 

All the data sets are based on research done in the United States and now the Center is trying to diversify their data sets to better reflect the U.S. population. The oldest data sets are in the 1930s or so. The Center collects 5-10 data sets each year, sometimes soliciting the data when they know an important study has been done. A special challenge is continually updating data stored on floppy disks. Funding comes from Radcliffe College endowments and grants The Murray Center is the only archive in the country that provides raw data to researchers, and is open to the public Monday-Friday, 9-5.

 

 

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