Illustration of female housemaid washing clothes in a wooden tub.

Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection

The Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection, part of the Penn State Harrisburg Library’s Archives and Special Collections, consists of literary, graphic, and manuscript materials dealing with the issues and individuals that comprised women’s history from the 15th century to the early 1980s. Compiled by Alice Kahler Marshall (1923-97), the collection encompasses all areas of women’s lives and includes 7,000 books and pamphlets (many of them rare), over 400 periodical titles (magazines and newspapers), and thousands of other materials—sheet music, diaries, posters, postcards, photographs, buttons (relating to wars, political campaigns, and social issues), book and magazine illustrations, advertisements, broadsides, trade cards, fashion plates, manuscript letters and documents, and more.