New WILPF Films and Recordings in Swarthmore Peace Collection

Crossing Borders, a documentary about WILPF made in 1987, is one of the films now digitized and available to view at the Swarthmore College Peace Collection.

June 2020

WILPF US President Darien De Lu and some Board members and Issue Committee Chairs joined a Zoom meeting with Wendy Chmielewski, Curator of the Swarthmore College Peace Collection, on Friday, May 22.

Chmielewski informed the group about a recent three-year grant the Swarthmore College Peace Collection received from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to enable the digitization of 650 film clips and audio recordings related to women and peace in the 20th century, including some WILPF materials.

She explained there are already several WILPF films available, including Crossing Borders, the history documentary about WILPF made in 1987. The project is ongoing and even more film and audio will be accessible in the coming months. She also coached the group on how to find WILPF materials already digitized.

A longer Q&A with Wendy Chmielewski will appear in the next Peace & Freedom in which she describes some of the different films and recordings that are available, what it takes to digitize historical materials, how WILPF members can ask for permissions, and more.

Until then, if you want to nose around the collection, there are links on the following webpage: Digital Resources in the Peace Collection

“If you look at the Internet Archive recordings, I suggest the following strategy, choose Date Archived and then select Date Added,” Chmielewski explains in the Q&A. “This will sort the recordings with the most recent at the top, especially the WILPF items.”