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scholarly endeavors amongst its faculty and anyone else around the world interested in broad‐based
learning. Thus, the resources of the Peace Collection are available beyond the institution, to the
general public, and at no charge. However, Peace Collection historical records are still held within an
elite educational institution, funded by that institution, whose primary goal is educating students
pursuing B.A. degrees. Although Swarthmore College is financially well endowed, it is still a small
institution, and not a research university. The Peace Collection has limited staff and resources, thus
restricting the scope of some plans and projects. In addition, despite the significant resources on
women, the central focus of the Peace Collection is on peace, and not solely on gender. However,
the institution still has access to a greater fund of resources than many other institutions around the
world.
At first glance, the Peace Collection historical records and resources may seem to focus mostly on
U.S. or western European peace activists and organizations. But there are significant resources from
other parts of the world as well: Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. Some of
these historical records reflect the experiences and opinions of US and Western European activists
visiting or working in countries outside of their won, but in many other cases, the historical records
are the writings of women and men from other parts of the world. Because the historical records
collected by the Peace Collection are not government records, these historical resources record the
activities of ordinary people who were motivated to act to end war and for a better world. It is
impossible to list all the resources held by the Peace Collection, however, a brochure is available here
today, as a guide for anyone interested in learning more about our resources. A special web site,
“Women’s Voices From Around the World,” showcasing our resources on women outside the US is
also available. 5
The creation and maintenance of archives are not ahistorical or simple processes. Through the
last three quarters of a century, historians and archivists alike interested in the history of women
around the world have attempted to expand both the quantity and variability of the historical record
on the role of women in the creation of our world, in individual cultures and societies, and over time.
In the mid 1930s when Beard and Schwimmer attempted to create the World Center for Women’s
Archives they hoped to “establish an educational institution, a place that would aid in the writing of
history and the education of women”, thus defining “archives” as much more than a building and a
place to preserve physical records. These women recognized the archives, its staff and researchers
would contribute to the creation, and re‐creation of women’s history. Although physically based in
the United States, the World Center for Women’s Archives was to be a leader in establishing an
international perspective, collecting material on women from around the world.
Despite the explosion of interest, research, and publications on women’s history in the second
half of the twentieth century, until the last two decades of that century, it was extraordinarily
difficult to locate primary resources recording women’s lives. This lack of resources was especially
true for women who were not part of an elite or the mainstream culture, for working class women,
for women of alternative sexualities, for women of color, or for women with disabilities. This lack of
availability of resources rests in the fact that the lives of women were not considered important
enough to the “progress” of human history for records to be kept, preserved, or disseminated.
Women’s historians, archivists, librarians, and activists have made huge efforts to rectify this
situation in the last 40 years and continue to do so, collecting, preserving, and providing access to
resources in the broadest possible manner. These three efforts: collecting, preserving, and providing
access form the heart of the archival process. Collecting resources on the lives of over half of
humanity is a tremendously large project. All such collectors‐professionals, scholars, activists, and
the interested general public alike‐create parameters to make such collecting practicable.
Institutional libraries and archives often have established policies for collecting. The Swarthmore
College Peace Collection collects on peace, social justice, and internationalism world‐wide. Other
women’s history libraries and archives collect on concerns specific to women‐education, movements
for women’s rights, marriage, and so on. Others collect limited to a geographical region or country.
And what does the Peace Collection collect in the 21 st century?‐Records of women’s formal
organizations, grass roots activist groups, writing and papers of individuals‐famous and not at all