Women, Book History, and the Long Eighteenth Century: Taking Stock, Moving Forward

abstract:Personal name authority records in the Library of Congress Name Authority File (LCNAF), which feeds directly into the Virtual International Authority File, are valuable for recovering women writers whose texts are electronically circulated yet whose identities as authors and people are often difficult to research. Using The Stainforth Library of Women's Writing as a case study, this essay encourages close collaboration with catalog librarians who are certified by the Name Authority Cooperative Program to create and contribute name authority records to the LCNAF for lesser-known women writers. This methodology can advance feminist recovery scholarship by curating a global women's book history that values women's identities on and beyond the page.