Archives

Archiving the Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project

Arden, Margaret, and others visited the archives at Smith College before making a final decision to entrust the OLOHP to Smith College. In the photo, standing, left to right: Arden Eversmeyer, Project Founder and Director, Margaret Purcell, Project Manager; Dr. Kelly Anderson, Lecturer in Study of Women and Gender and Oral Historian. Seated: Sherrill Redmon, who was then the Director of the Sophia Smith Collection. Photo in 2010.

Smith College in Northampton, MA

After working on the Project for almost a decade, it came home to us that the OLOHP had produced an unparalleled collection of stories filled with first person accounts of what it was like to live as a lesbian born in the early decades of the 1900s. After a two-year exploration of available options for a long-term home for the OLOHP, we entered into an arrangement with the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College. As we move forward, we are confident that the Project has a home that will protect and preserve our work, as well as make the materials accessible to researchers and visitors.

All of the Herstories and auxillary materials that have gone into building the OLOHP are being transferred incrementally to Smith College. Approximately a third of our materials are already there, and more will be transferred soon.

For information about the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College, please visit https://www.smith.edu/library/libs/ssc/about.html

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Note sent to the OLOHP: What you have done is so important that I think even you don’t understand it. This will have a life of its own and be around way after we are gone. To have thought this up, seen the need, and assumed the effort to get it done is phenomenal. I really do salute you.

TF says: The women that the OLOHP has brought to us have lived remarkable lives, often solitary and private, and we are far richer for knowing these women, their struggles and their passion.