University Libraries Awarded LSTA Grant from Indiana State Library

An LSTA Digitization Grant award in the amount of $21,194 will be used to create a Middletown Women’s History Digital Collection to provide online access to archival materials documenting the experiences of women in Muncie, Indiana, from the 1880s through the 1930s. The resources will illuminate women’s history in the six areas of the seminal Middletown studies conducted in Muncie as a representative American community beginning in the 1920s: Getting a Living; Making a Home; Training the Young; Using Leisure; Engaging in Religious Practices; and Engaging in Community Activities.

Through increased access to diaries, correspondence, scrapbooks, and other records of women and women’s organizations, the resource will expand research opportunities in women’s studies, women’s history, U. S. history, sociology, and other disciplines. It will provide fresh historical perspective and new areas for investigation focusing on women in Middle America.

Items to be digitized include:
Altrusa Club of Muncie, Inc., Records, 1923-45
Cassady/Nelson Family Collection, 1887-90, 1926
Grace Arthur School Memory Book, 1926-32
Louise Carey School Memory Book, 1915
Mae Evans Papers from the Fred and Penny Prow Collection, 1916-31
Marsh/Ryan Family Collection, 1902
McRae Club Records, 1894-1950
Mina McCormick Becket Diaries, 1933-34
Muncie Business and Professional Women’s Club Records, 1919-62
Reticule Circle Club Records, 1927-40
Riverside Culture Club Records, 1913-34
Unitarian Universalist Church Records, 1894-1942
Women’s Club of Muncie Records, 1876-1942
Women’s Franchise League of Muncie Records, 1912-19
YWCA – Muncie, Indiana Branch Records, 1911-38

Ball State’s Center for Middletown Studies and the Women’s Studies Program will be partners in the grant project. The resources will be part of a Web-based teaching tool under development by the Center for Middletown Studies in partnership with Archives and Special Collections. Ball State’s Women’s Studies Program will provide two student interns to assist with transcription of selected hand-written items and will promote the resource through their Web site and publications. Students from the program will also utilize the materials for classes and assignments.

Over the past several years, Ball State University Libraries have utilized more than $75,000 in Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grants to create digital collections. These collections have ranged from U.S. Civil War documents to oral histories to an historic anti-Ku Klux Klan newspaper.