MWWC: The First Fifty Years
(Embed YouTube video here)
This film documents the history, growth, and development of the Maine Women Writers Collection, a unique library special collection at the Portland, Maine campus of the University of New England. It also acknowledges the inspiration the Collection’s founders and their work have provided to the scholars and students of the state of Maine and beyond.
The film was premiered at a special symposium in June of 2009 entitled “Women in the Archives: Using Archival Collections in Research and Teaching on U.S. Women.” The symposium brought together scholars of international reputation to explore the vital role such collections have played in our knowledge of our culture and in education about it.
The film uses archival footage, audio recordings, and contemporary interviews with narration to tell the story of how a dream by two women educators in Portland, Maine, Grace Dow and Dorothy Healy, led to the well-known, vital, and active educational resource that supports the study of women’s lives and work, and provides a model for other institutions to collect and record such documentary material.