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Rural Life in Iowa: An Iowa Women's Archives Resource Guide: More Resources

A guide of collections held in the Iowa Women's Archives from and about rural life, farming, and agricultural labor, organized alphabetically.

An Overview

Collecting Rural & Agricultural Life

"March in Support of Migrant Workers," Des Moines Register, February 1969, LULAC Council 10 records, Migration is Beautiful.

This page connects researchers to other IWA resources related to the study of rural and agricultural life and history in Iowa. Researchers will find links to various Iowa Women's Archives projects and collection guides related to farm women, agricultural labor, and six-on-six basketball, including digitized materials and photographs as well as historical descriptions that give context to the collections.

Resources

Rural Women Collections

A record group of more than 170 Iowa Women's Archives collections. These collections are also linked within this guide. 

Rural Women Digital Collections

A collection of digitized materials, including photographs, letters, and newspaper articles, about or from rural women in Iowa. The objects our housed at the Iowa Digital Library. 

Voices from the Land: An Oral History Project in Iowa

"Voices from the Land: An Oral History Project in Iowa" consists of oral histories conducted in 2000 and 2001 by Doris Malkmus, Project Archivist, as part of the Rural Women's Project of the Iowa Women's Archives in conjunction with Iowa State University. The project contains tapes and transcripts of oral histories, photographs, slides, and resource files. Further related resources:

Migration is Beautiful

Migration is Beautiful is a digital humanities project drawn from the holdings of the Mujeres Latinas collections preserved in the Iowa Women’s Archives in the University of Iowa Libraries. The Migration is Beautiful website highlights the journeys Latinas and Latinos made to Iowa and situates the contributions of Latino communities within a broader understanding of Iowa’s history of migration and civil rights activism. For more resources:

Mujeres Latinas Oral History Project

In 2005, the Iowa Women’s Archives initiated the Mujeres Latinas Project to preserve the history of Iowa Latinas, their families, and their communities. Oral history interviews are a major component of the Mujeres Latinas Project. The bulk of the interviews were conducted between 2005 and 2007. During this period, interviewers recorded 112 oral histories.  Communities represented include Fort Madison, Des Moines, Mason City, the Quad Cities, Muscatine, Williamsburg, Conesville, and Sioux City.  

6-on-6 Basketball and the Legacy of Girls’ and Women’s Sport in Iowa

For most of the twentieth century, Iowa was widely known for its devotion to a unique form of girls’ and women’s sport known as 6-on-6 basketball. Thriving in rural communities, 6-on-6 is a part of many rural women's collections. For more resources:

Rooted in Iowa Exhibit

The exhibit was housed at the University of Iowa Main Library in the Iowa Women's Archives case. It showcased images and artifacts from Iowa Women's Archives' rural women collections.