| Abstract: | Abstract This article examines how materials collected by the Smith College Archives document the official life of the College, as well as the lives of undergraduates as they participate in student organizations, athletics, musical groups, and engage in other social relationships. It explores how the material has been collected, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the primary source material. It also examines how collections have been used to interpret what it was like to educate a woman in a single-sex institution at the end of the nineteenth century, and what it was truly like for the women who came to Smith to be educated. In addition, the article discusses a collaborative digitization project between the Five Colleges in the Pioneer Valley (Amherst, Hampshire, Mt. Holyoke, Smith, and the University of Massachusetts), funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation between 1996 and 1999, that made selected records on women's education available to the research community on the World Wide Web. |
