Want to hear the voices of women from Bryn Mawr’s past? Interested in hearing personal stories about women’s education in the twentieth century?

I’m very excited to inform you about a new phase of The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women’s Education…. thanks to the generous volunteer help of current Bryn Mawr undergrad Samantha Saludades and the work of Isabella Barnstein who works in Special Collections we are digitizing the oral history collection held here which includes interviews from many different kinds of people from students and alums to retired hall wardens and professors. We gave you a taste of this in an earlier post with an interview with M. Carey Thomas which you can listen to here mcareythomas1935

This collection includes some interviews relating their time as far back as the early 1900s. The project was shaped by the efforts of former Special Collections archivist, Caroline Rittenhouse, and her work will be treasured by many of you who are interested in hearing about life at the college in previous years.

Beginning with a sample of twelve interviews chosen for their diversity of topics and speakers, we have created digital copies of the conversations and an electronic catalog of all the interviews (there was up to this point only a card catalog with varying details about each of the files). Those interviews that have been legally released will be able to be listened to eventually when we are able to host them online, and a short summary of what was said in the interview has been created for each of the interviews. In some cases we have transcripts of the interviews, often typewritten, and these will also be digitized and released, according to the permissions on the individual interview. This is a lot of work but exciting stuff! I’ll be posting another entry on the blog this week from Bryn Mawr student worker Isabella Barnstein who has been working on this important collection of materials.

Check back on this site for updates on the project, or feel free to contact me if you would like to know more about what we are doing (jredmond@brynmawr.edu)