Women's History Month 2021: Museum Digital Collections

Image by Engin_Akyurt, Pixabay https://pixabay.com/users/engin_akyurt-3656355/

Digital Collections are a great resource for the family historian. Wikipedia defines a digital collection as: “an online database of digital objects that can include text, still images, audio, video, digital documents, or other digital media formats. Objects can consist of digitized content like print or photographs, as well as originally produced digital content like word processor files or social media posts. In addition to storing content, digital libraries provide means for organizing, searching, and retrieving the content contained in the collection.” [1]

You know about digital collections and most likely you have searched them for individual ancestral and social history information. One collaborative catalog of digital collections is the Digital Public Library of America, which includes items from the Smithsonian.

A massive list of digital collections and online offerings for museums can be found on the MCN blog  post, The Ultimate Guide to Virtual Museum Resources, E-Learning, and Online Collections .

Now let’s look at some digital museum collections to get an idea of what’s available.

The Museum of Flight’s Digital Collections includes several collections focusing on women, including:

• Mary M. Oldehoff Flight Nurse Log 
• Norah O’Neill Papers 
• Margery Watson World War II Photographs

I love when a museum surprises you with their holdings and provides you with something you would never expect. Take, for instance, the Henry Ford Museum. In their digital collections you can see a quilt

And items dealing with women's suffrage .

Yes, Henry Ford, the car guy. That museum.

There's so much for women's history in this digital collection. A search on the word “quilt” brought back 36 quilt results. And a search on the keyword “women” brought back nearly 3,000, including women’s shoes. You know I tried the word “cookbook,” which resulted in 49 hits.

Let's take a look at one more museum, The Hagley. The museum’s library has a digital collection that includes the magazine of the DuPont company. 

This magazine is a genealogical gem and consists of all kinds of photos and information about employees, including this newlywed couple from 1948.

Museums are much more than just a place to look at exhibits (though I love museum exhibits). They are also a place to research. Hopefully, this week has given you some ideas of where to look and how to research using museums. See you tomorrow!

[1]”Digital Library,” Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_library: accessed 12 March 2021).