Administrative Information
Acquisition Information
Photographs, manuscripts, and lantern slides of the National Woman's Party were first deposited with the Library of Congress by Alice Paul in 1921. The Manuscript Division acquired the records of the National Woman's Party through transfer in 1938 from the former Division of Fine Arts and gifts from the party in 1941 and 1979. An addition was given by Amelia R. Fry in 1987. The National Woman's Party gave a series of additions to the papers from 2020 to 2022. A final acquisition came to the Library in 2022 by purchase.
Processing History
The records of the National Woman's Party were processed in three groups between 1979 and 1984 by William Parham and Michael McElderry. Additional records received in 1987, as well as unprocessed portions from Groups I-II, were processed as Group IV in 2002 by Michael McElderry. The records that form Group V were received by the Library when the National Woman's Party disbanded in 2020. These records were processed in 2021-2022 by Karen Linn Femia and Rachel Telford with the assistance of Emily Flint, Rosa Hernandez, Sara Ludewig, and Shandra Morehouse; and the digital portion of the records was processed by Amanda Loeb with the assistance of Kathleen O'Neill, Colleen Benoit Kim, and Chad Conrady.
Digital files were received as part of Group V of the National Woman’s Party Records. Sets of digital files are identified by a unique digital ID consisting of three numbers: the collection number, the registration number, and a sequential number (for example mss34355_212_054). Registration numbers 210, 212, and 242 were received on a variety of storage media, including floppy disks, optical disks, zip disks, and flash drives, each of which was assigned a digital ID. Registration numbers 214, 237, 238, 239, 240, and 241 were received on six external hard drives and include various backups of the National Woman's Party internal server. Top-level directories on hard drives were assigned a unique digital ID number. Registration 269 consists of staff email archives exported by Manuscript Division staff from Microsoft 365 accounts. Use the digital ID number to request access copies of the files associated with each media or directory. A description of the standard processes taken on all born digital records can be found in the Processing History Note: Born Digital Collection Material at https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/eadmss.Digital.
Additional processes were conducted on select media to recover data. Disk images of some optical disks were created and the files were exported from the disk image. Disk images also were created from raw stream files extracted from 5.25" floppy disks. Staff also imaged damaged or corrupt media and extracted the files from the disk image. Audio files in .cda format were ripped to .wav format by staff during processing. Manuscript Division staff used Adobe Pagemaker 5/6.5/7 and Adobe InDesign and Illustrator CS3 in an emulated Windows XP environment to convert Adobe PageMaker and Illustrator files to PDF and TIFF files. Staff converted QuarkXPress files to TIFF files using QuarkXPress 5.5/6 and Adobe Illustrator in an emulated Mac OS9 environment.
Transfers
Items have been transferred from the Manuscript Division to other custodial divisions of the Library. Books from the party's Florence Bayard Hilles Library have been transferred to the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. Sound recordings, videotapes, film reels, and some CDs and DVDs have been transferred to the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division. Some periodicals have been transferred to the Serial and Government Publications Division. Some photographs, political cartoons, postcards, posters, and art works have been transferred to the Prints and Photographs Division. An inventory of some this material is available in their finding aid (see https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/eadpnp.pp002011). All transfers are identified in these divisions as part of the National Woman's Party Records. Patrons are encouraged to contact these divisions in advance of a research visit.
Related Material
Related collections in the Manuscript Division include the records of the Woman's Party Corporation (see https://lccn.loc.gov/mm97084098), the National Woman's party web archive (see https://www.loc.gov/item/lcwaN0004102/), and the Anna Kelton Wiley Papers (see https://lccn.loc.gov/mm78045682).
Technical Requirements
Digital files were created in Windows and Mac operating systems, versions unknown. The content is primarily text files and image files. Text files are in Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx, .wbk), portable document (.pdf), and plain text (.txt) formats. Image files are in lossless bitmap (.gif, .png), lossy image compression (.jpeg, .jpg), Adobe Photoshop Document (.psd), and Tag Image File (.tif, .tiff) formats. Additional file types present include Microsoft Excel (.xls, .xlsx), comma-separated values (.csv), Microsoft Publisher (.pub), PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx), database (.db, .dbf, .mdb, .wdb, .wpd), and email archive (.dbx, .pst) formats. Media files are in .mov, .mp3, .mp4, .vob, .wav, .wma, and .wmv formats. Adobe desktop publishing file types include Illustrator (.ai, .eps), InDesign (.indd), and PageMaker (.p65, .pmd). The majority of digital files can be viewed with a file viewer or text editor. Document files in .pub format can be viewed in Microsoft Publisher. At the time of processing, content from some 5.25” and 3.5” floppy disks was not fully recoverable. Partial and/or unformatted text from these files can be viewed with a text editor such as Notepad. Adobe desktop publishing files are in proprietary formats and can only be viewed in the original software. Email .pst files, though currently unprocessed and unavailable, can be accessed in Microsoft Outlook or viewed with a file viewer tool.
Microfilm
Group I of the National Woman's Party Records, received as a gift by the Library from the National Woman's Party in 1941, was processed in 1981 by the Microfilming Corporation of America, which produced a microfilm edition on ninety-seven reels, which are available in the Manuscript Reading Room. Group I of the National Woman's Party Records is described in National Woman's Party Papers: The Suffrage Years, 1913-1920, edited by Donald L. Haggerty (Sanford, N.C.: Microfilming Corporation of America, 1981). Group II of the National Woman's Party Records was given to the Library by the National Woman's Party following their processing and reproduction on 179 reels of microfilm by the Microfilming Corporation of America in 1979. The microfilm of Group II, with the exception of reel 167, was given to the Library by the National Woman's Party in 2020 with the gift that became Group V of the collection. The Group II microfilm reels are identified in the Group II and Group V container lists. Additionally, the Group II microfilm is described in The National Woman's Party Papers, 1913-1974, edited by Thomas C. Pardo (Sanford, N.C.: Microfilming Corporation of America, 1979), which is available in the reference collection of the Manuscript Reading Room. To promote preservation of the originals, researchers are required to consult the microfilm editions for Group I and Group II.
Online Content
Selected photographs from the records of the National Woman's Party are available on the Library of Congress website "Women of Protest: Photographs from the Records of the National Woman's Party" (see http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/collmss.ms000004)..
Preferred Citation
Researchers wishing to cite this collection should include the following information: Roman numeral designating the Group followed by a colon and container number or Digital ID, National Woman's Party Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.