Ellen Swallow Richards Digital Library

Ellen Swallow Richards Digital Library

This digital library has been prepared in fulfillment of a class assignment for
ILS655-70 -- at Southern Connecticut State University.

About the Digital Library

Mission Statement
The goal of the Ellen Swallow Richards Digital Library is to provide researchers and scholars information on ESR. As she was the first female student and female instructor of MIT, both the MIT Archives and the MIT Museum receive many requests for information regarding Ms. Richards. By allowing these materials to be available electronically, it will provide easier access to this valuable and interesting information. While our first priority is serving the MIT Community, this website will be available to all.

Collection Policy
There are many documents, publications, photographs, etc., pertaining to Ellen Swallow Richards and her work at the Institute. Initially, I have chosen a selection of items from each of these groups, based primarily on personal interest, and perceived general appeal to researchers. As staff time permits, more items will be added to the Library - chosen both for their importance, and also their physical state of being. Many of these documents are very brittle due to their age. The included bibliography shows a general road map of the possible items for inclusion.

Optimized viewing
This Digital Library is best viewed in Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher. In certain versions of Netscape and Mozilla there will be a slight unevenness of certain thumbnail tables. We could find no logical reason for this, something in the way Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Photoshop are working together seem to upset these browsers from time to time.

Note about search engine
Regrettably, at the present time full-text searching of the scanned documents is not possible. The search engine will however search the title fields of these documents. Also, the documents chosen for initial inclusion are not very long - the longest being approximately 35 pages, the shortest only one page. Therefore, quick skimming of these documents is not a great burden.

Enhancements and/or evaluation
One goal of the DL is to implement OCR (optical character recognition) to allow users to search the full-text collections. Presently, I did not have access or the financial support to begin exploring that option. Realistically, this will only be done if the Archives and/or Museum feel the benefit would offset the cost. I have included both a last updated and email link for comments at the bottom of each page. I welcome feedback, suggestions and constructive criticism.

Maintenance plan
This library will become a shared resource between the MIT Museum and the MIT Archives. As the links on this site are "in-house", meaning under our control, we will (hopefully) not have the problem of sites disappearing and producing dead links. However, routine link checking is still very important to ensure all files are acting properly. Design and format changes will undoubtedly change with time, as we further learn what is best for our users.

Copyright
The ESR Digital Library abides by the U.S. Copyright Law. The vast majority of material was published prior to 1923, thus placing it in the public domain. Several items to be included at a later time have copyrights held by the MIT Press, but permission has been granted on those items.

The letters hold the only question mark. Under current copyright law the letter writer or their heirs hold the copyright to unpublished letters. For an unpublished letter that was created before Jan. 1, 1978, the copyright period is the life of the author + 70 years, or copyright expires Dec. 31, 2002, whichever is longer. The copyright on the letter by William B. Rogers has ended (he died in 1882). The letters from Ida Ryan are not as easy. Ms. Ryan passed away in 1950, and she never married. Her death notice mention only one surviving sister and two nephews. As there could be a claim on these letters, they will be used under fair use for this project, and we will be research further to gain future permission for use by the Archives and the Museum. Grace MacCloud received a degree in nutrition from MIT in 1901. I have not been able to find any more information on her at this point, and so will be using this letter as "fair use" as well. As Ms. Richards left almost her entire estate to MIT, all writings both published and unpublished are owned by MIT.