Skip to main content

Inside the Lisa Unger Baskin Collection

The Lisa Unger Baskin Collection arrived at Rubenstein Library in April 2015. Carefully assembled over 45 years by noted bibliophile, activist and collector Lisa Unger Baskin, the collection is a transformative body of material documenting women at work. In Baskin’s own words, "The unifying thread is that women have always been productive and working people and this history essentially has been hidden." 

The collection includes many well-known monuments of women’s history and arts, as well as lesser-known works produced by female scholars, printers, publishers, laborers, scientists, authors, artists, and political activists. Taken together, they comprise a mosaic of the ways that women have been productive, creative, and socially engaged over more than five hundred years.