[Ohiodig] Researcher looking for rare/uncatalogued titles

[DRESSLER, Virginia]

Hello OhioDIG-

I'm working with a faculty member from the English department on a project, and I wonder if some of you may be able to forward the request below to some good listservs?

The topic is finding 19th century memoirs written by woman on their experiences as patients in American insane asylums.

Any help would be appreciated!

Responses can be made directly to me or Dr. Takayoshi.

Many thanks!

Ginnie

--
Virginia Dressler, MA, MLIS
Digital Projects Librarian
University Libraries
Kent State University
Kent, Ohio
(330) 672-1465



--------------------------

Greetings--


I am writing in search of any uncatalogued or rare book holding titles written by 19th century American women about their experiences in insane asylums.


Over the last four years, I have collected 33 memoirs published between 1842 and 1894 by 22 women writing about their experiences as patients in American insane asylums. These memoirs have been difficult to locate; building the collection has become a significant part of the larger project and has revealed that there are simply more of these memoirs than published scholarship has yet acknowledged. Even four years after beginning this project, I was serendipitously discovering mention of titles which I then tracked down through research libraries, state archives, historical societies, and online sites.


I am working with a Kent State University Librarian, Virginia Dressler, to build an open-access online database of these asylum memoirs, thus collecting them together for researchers and readers in one location for the first time.


On the slight but exciting chance that there may be other titles out there that we have not tracked down, I am asking the list’s help. I am interested in any memoirs (books or pamphlets, published or unpublished) which were written in the long 19th century by women patients of American insane asylums.


Please feel free to forward this email onto others who you might think could help, and thank you so much for your assistance.


Pam

====================

Dr. Pamela Takayoshi

Kent State University

Department of English

Kent, Ohio 44242

ptakayos at kent.edu


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://lists.library.ohio.gov/pipermail/ohiodig/attachments/20191008/7491bff2/attachment.html