Digital Women's History Resources

Women's History Resources now available online through the Ball State University's Digital Media Repository!

Ball State University Libraries is pleased to announce the availability of three collections of women's history resources available online in the Digital Media Repository (http://libx.bsu.edu), the Middletown Women's History Digital Collection, The Man Haters Film Collection, and the Eleanor Roosevelt Speech Collection.

Middletown Women's History Digital Collection
The Middletown Women's History Digital Collection provides online access to archival materials documenting the experiences of women in Muncie, Indiana from the 1880s through the 1930s. It includes diaries, minutes, and correspondence, photographs and other documents from the wealth of resources available in Ball State University Libraries' Archives and Special Collections. The collection is organized based on the six areas used by Helen and Robert Lynd in their seminal sociological study of Muncie, or "Middletown," in the 1920s and 1930s. This project was supported by a grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act, administered by the Indiana State Library.

The Man Haters Film Collection
The Man Haters is a rare 35mm silent movie filmed in Muncie, Indiana in 1915. The film was produced by Basil McHenry, a traveling film producer from Akron, Ohio. He financed the film with sponsorship by Muncie's Majestic Theater and The Muncie Evening Press newspaper. Readers of the Press were asked to cast their votes for the leading actresses using coupons printed in the paper. Filming began in Muncie, Indiana on November 3, 1915 and the movie opened at the Majestic Theater on November 15, 1915. Basil McHenry also produced similar films in other towns in Indiana and Ohio.

This digital collection contains the ten minute original version and a longer documentary version of The Man Haters film, newspaper clippings about the contest, still photographs from the film, and a booklet about history of the film.

Eleanor Roosevelt Speech Collection
The Eleanor Roosevelt Speech Collection includes digital audio,photographs, and a transcript documenting Eleanor Roosevelt's speech to convocation in Assembly Hall at Ball State Teacher's College (now Ball State University) in Muncie, Indiana, on May 6, 1959. The title of her speech was "Is America Facing World Leadership?" and warned against complacency and stressed the urgency of understanding other peoples in the world. These collections are also available to researchers in person in Archives and Special Collections, Ball State University Libraries.

If you have any questions about these or other collections in the Digital Media Repository, please feel free to contact:

John Straw
Assistant Dean for Digital Initiatives and Special Collections and Digital
Media
Repository Project Coordinator
Ball State University Libraries
Alexander M. Bracken Library
Muncie, IN 47306
jstraw@bsu.edu

Categories: digital content