About the Jane Addams Papers Project

The Jane Addams Papers Project is a documentary editing project headquartered at Duke University. It is an off-campus affiliate of the Duke University history department.

The project began in 1976. Its initial goal was to locate, gather, and reconstruct a collection of documents created or received by Jane Addams that would be as comprehensive as possible. To this end, editors spent years identifying, obtaining, and organizing originals or copies of documents in collections and private hands from around the world.

The Jane Addams Papers Microfilm edition

The eighty-two reel microfilm edition of the Jane Addams Papers contains Addams documents assembled by the project from hundreds of different library and archival collections internationally, as well as from individual donors.

The microfilm is arranged in five major series: Correspondence, Documents, Writings, Hull-House Association Records, and Clippings, with Addendum. There are approximately 2,000 images on each reel of microfilm.

The reels have been published by the Microfilming Corporation of America and University Microfilms International (1985-86). The full set is available at several university and public libraries, including Duke University, Swarthmore College, the New York Public Library, the University of California Los Angeles, the University of California Irvine, the University of Chicago, Vassar College and many others. Separate reels may be borrowed through Interlibrary Loan from the Library of Congress. See http://www.loc.gov/rr/loan/.

For further descriptions of the microfilm, see also:

http://www.il.proquest.com/research/pd-product-Addams-35.shtml

The Jane Addams Papers Microfilm guide

The project produced a major companion publication that is an indispensable aid to readers in their use of the microfilm edition. The Jane Addams Papers: A Comprehensive Guide, was published by the Indiana University Press in 1996 (ISBN 0-253-21036-4). This 684-page guide provides detailed name and subject indexes to the correspondence and writings on film, as well as chronologies, bibliographies of writings, and genealogical information. Look for it in the collections of a library near you.

The Jane Addams Papers Book edition

The project’s multi-volume book edition, The Selected Papers of Jane Addams, is currently in progress. It is being published by the University of Illinois Press.

Volume 1, Preparing to Lead, 1860-81, and Volume 2, Venturing into Usefulness, 1881-88, are available through your local independent bookstores, through online booksellers, and direct from the University of Illinois Press at:

http://www.press.uillinois.edu/f02/addams3.html.

Additional information about Volume 1 and Volume 2 is available on the Book Edition page of  this web site.

How to Cite the Jane Addams Papers Project

Documentary editions are copyrighted products and their use is subject to proper bibliographic source citation, including information gleaned from editorial annotations, which are scholarly work.

Editors names should be cited in full. We recommend the following bibliographic formats in citing the products of the Jane Addams Papers Project.

For the microfilm

The Jane Addams Papers. Edited by Mary Lynn McCree Bryan et al. Microfilm, 82 reels. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International, 1985-86.

When citing or quoting from the microfilm, please cite reel and frame numbers, as well as title and date of document.  

For the microfilm guide

Bryan, Mary Lynn McCree, Nancy Slote, and Maree de Angury. The Jane Addams Papers: A Comprehensive Guide. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.

For the book edition

Bryan, Mary Lynn McCree, Barbara Bair, and Maree de Angury, eds. The Selected Papers of Jane Addams, vol. 1, Preparing to Lead, 1860-81. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003.

Bryan, Mary Lynn McCree, Barbara Bair, and Maree de Angury, eds.  The Selected Papers of Jane Addams, vol. 2, Venturing into Usefulness, 1881-88.  Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009.

When citing information from an annotation in the book edition, please include page and note numbers, i.e., 193, nn.5,6 or 297-98, n.2.