The Gerritsen Collection of Aletta H. Jacobs

This database is the definitive cross-cultural resource for information on women's history. It spans more than four centuries and 15 languages and includes over two million pages in full image. Users can trace the evolution of feminism within a single country, as well as the impact of that country's feminist movement on other countries and their movements. The Gerritsen Collection also provides immediate access to many primary sources from around the world that were previously available only in a limited number of rare book rooms.

Aletta Jacobs was a Dutch physician and feminist who, along with her husband C.V. Gerritsen began collecting information on women's issues in the late 1800s. Overall, the collection contains more than 4,500 publications from the U.S., the U.K., Canada, New Zealand, and continental Europe.

We first put this collection on microform. Now we are digitizing the microform to provide more than two million page images that accurately reproduce the original printed works online. The database consists of two segments:

The Periodical Series: This segment represents about 25 percent of the material in the database. It comprises 265 titles, including The Suffragist (1913-21) and The Women's Protest Against Woman Suffrage (1912-18).

Monograph Language Series: These 4,471 monographs and pamphlets make up about 75 percent of the collection. Included are 2,336 titles tracing suffragism in the English-speaking world. The collection will soon include 929 German titles that document the history of organized movements in Germany and Switzerland, and 734 French titles that cover women's issues from Gallic times through World War II. Another 472 titles representing 12 languages will also be available.