Digitized Collections of 19th and 20th Century Catalogs, Manuscripts and Ephemera

If you are interested in period advertisements, catalogs, magazines, scrapbooks, diaries, and ephemera, do see the digitized collections that Harvard and Duke University have online.

Women Working: 1800-1930, Harvard University Open Collections

As Harvard describes it:

Women Working, 1800 - 1930 focuses on women's role in the United States economy and provides access to digitized historical, manuscript, and image resources selected from Harvard University's library and museum collections. The collection features approximately 500,000 digitized pages and images including:
7,500 pages of manuscripts
3,500 books and pamphlets
1,200 photographs

Includes such representative items as

• Dorcas Magazine (crocheting and knitting, 19th c), (some issues)
• Ladies Home Journal, (some issues)
• Woman's Home Companion, (some issues)
• Abercrombie and Fitch 1913 Styles catalog,
• and the diary of Delia Kinglsey, school teacher (1906-1910).

Visit the site! See http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/ww/

Above: Ivory Soap advertisement from Woman's Home Companion, January 1909, Harvard Digital Collections

Digitized Collections, Duke University

Part of the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library. Includes items such as

• "9,000 advertising items and publications dating from 1850 to 1920"
• 19th century sheet music!
• writings and diaries of African-American and Civil War women

Visit the site! See http://library.duke.edu/specialcollections/collections/digitized/index.html

Super resources for researching and understanding fashion!