writing_womans_lives_symposium_paper_book_v2

country of origin. These records include essays and writings by young women, mostly Muslim,
describing their lives before and during the wars. There is little in the descriptive metadata for the
Fellowship of Reconciliation records that notes these very important historical records. The Peace
Collection, with significant resources on women around the world, and its staff, myself included, are
well aware of the importance of providing access to the historical records on women. But the
records in the Fellowship of Reconciliation papers contain literally thousands of topics for research.
How do we choose which topics to promote? The good news is that the internet is providing some
way to locate these historical resources. A Google search with the terms Bosnia and Fellowship of
Reconciliation quickly pulls up a link to the finding aid (folder by folder list of these FOR records),
created by Peace Collection staff. But there is still no immediate access to the actual documents over
the internet, and why not? An interested researcher would have to visit the Peace Collection to see
many of these documents. Our staff is small, only 3 people, so we cannot scan all the documents we
have, and we have to make choices on how we manage the many tasks of collecting, preserving the
resources, as well as providing access. In addition, some of these Bosnian records are restricted for
now, out of a desire to maintain privacy for those young women who wrote about their experiences
for the FOR, but did not personally agree to have their writings made public for all readers.
Where should the historical records be housed or preserved for international organizations based
in more than one country, or for the papers of people, like these young Bosnian women whose lives
are spent in several countries? Will digitization and global internet access make such questions
irrelevant? Even in the digital world of the 21 st century however, human intervention in the archival
process is necessary. Perhaps the first step in this process is the responsibility of the record creatorswomen
activists, writers, artists, and others who can, whenever possible, make sure their records are
saved in some fashion. Next, archivists, librarians, historians and other scholars, in conjunction with
those women activist/creators, must expand our ideas about what constitutes the historical record
and how to make it available to as broad an audience as possible. We also need to be aware how
archivists and librarians may either contribute to, or obscure, the historical record, in the process of
preserving and providing access.
All this requires resources‐financial, educational, and cultural. It also requires our dedicated
political desire (in the largest sense of that term), to expanding the knowledge and understanding of
how women’s lives are crucial components to the many histories of our world. As women historians
who came before us understood, preserving the historical records and providing access to it are
necessary tools for that knowledge.
Keywords: Internationalism, Peace, Archives, Historical records
Wendy E. Chmielewski, PhD.
George R. Cooley Curator
Swarthmore College Peace Collection
wchmiel1@swarthmore.edu
Notes
1 Clapp, Elizabeth J., and Julie Roy Jeffrey. 2011. Women, Dissent and Anti‐Slavery in Britain and America,
1790‐1865. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Chmielewski, Wendy E. [Unpublished Paper] “Sisters of the
Olive Leaf Circles: Women in the British Nineteenth Century Peace Movement,” [Presented at
Narratives of Peace Conference, University of Sheffield, UK, May 26, 2012]; Midgley, Clare. 1995.
Women Against Slavery: The British Campaigns, 1780‐1870. London: Routledge; and Sklar, Kathryn Kish,
and James Brewer Stewart. 2007. Women's Rights and Transatlantic Antislavery in the Era of
Emancipation. New Haven: Yale University Press;
2
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 1915. Bericht‐‐Rapport—Report.
Amsterdam: International Women's Committee of Permanent Peace.
3
Ellen Starr Brinton Papers, Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Correspondence; and
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