After 29 years as the Radcliffe archivist, Jane Sheldon Knowles retired in December. According to Marilyn Dunn, executive director of the Schlesinger Library and librarian of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knowles was the founder and creator of the organized archives at Radcliffe. “In creating the archives,” Dunn remarked, “Jane rounded up records spread across basements of college buildings and rationalized management and access policies to those records. She estimates having answered approximately 65,000 reference questions. In recent years, she participated in a project to make key Harvard and Radcliffe reference works available online. Most importantly, Jane was the human connection between scores of alumnae and the college they loved. She was involved in the indexing of Radcliffe student publications and supervised the cataloging and digitization of more than 10,000 photographs.”

Jane Knowles earned both her MA and her BA from Oxford, and she pursued additional studies at the University of Florence and Boston University. An accomplished woman of many interests and activities, Jane Knowles was honored by colleagues and friends at a reception held on December 8 in the Radcliffe Gymnasium.

Jane Knowles