Smith College Collections
Smith College Collections / Collected Documents / Library of Congress
The Margaret Sanger Papers Microfilm Edition:Smith College Collections, published in 1996 by University Publications of America, (now ProQuest) contains nearly 45,000 documents drawn from the Margaret Sanger Papers and nineteen other collections of manuscript material and archival records located in the Sophia Smith Collection and Smith College Archives at Smith College. It incorporates extensive correspondence, writings, and organizational records chronicling Sanger's career as the founder and life-long leader of the American and international birth control movements; and rich documentation of her personal life, friendships and family.
For more information on the collection, see the Proquest site.
For the Guide and Index in PDF format (note: it is a large file).
Organization
Documents in these two series were carefully described using item-level targets and arranged into the following five subseries:
Subseries 1: Correspondence
Sanger's incoming and outgoing correspondence, as well as letters written and received on her behalf by her secretaries.Subseries 2: Organizational Records/Conference Materials
Organizational records, including constitutions, by-laws, minutes, publications, form letters, and reports created by birth control organizations which Sanger established, led, or in which she played a significant role. This subseries also includes proceedings, programs and other records related to conferences in the U.S. and abroad which were organized or attended by Sanger.Subseries 3: Legal/Governmental Material
Records relating to the trials in which Sanger or one of the birth control organizations she led was a participant, and records of government legislation she sponsored.Subseries 4: Writings
Diaries, journals, speeches, articles, unpublished manuscripts, and statements and miscellaneous writings by Sanger.Subseries 5: Miscellany
Miscellaneous material that chronicles Sanger's non-birth control activities, family, homes, and hobbies. Also includes tributes to Sanger, itineraries, calendars, appointment books, financial records and notes and biographical information.
Reel Guide
To provide access to the documents in the microfilm edition, the Project prepared printed guides to each of its microfilmed series. Each guide includes an introduction to the collection, an essay on editorial principles and methodology, histories of each of the seventeen organizations Sanger founded or led, brief reel descriptions, and an item-level name/title index. The introductory material, but not the indexes, are available on the Lexis-Nexis website.
Availability
This list was last updated on Apr. 2011.