Karen Averill Jackson was born on January 17, 1940 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Elmore Jackson, an executive of the American Friends Service Committee, and Elisabeth Averill Jackson, a 1931 graduate of Mount Holyoke College. She attended the Friends Seminary in New York City in 1953-1954 and the Oakwood School in Poughkeepsie, New York, from 1954-1957. From 1957-1961 she was a student at Mount Holyoke, where she majored in political science and received a B.A. degree. In the fall of 1961 she began working for the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company in New York City. She married David L. Williams on September 7, 1963, lived in Moscow in 1964-1965 while he studied journalism, and had a daughter in 1971. She also attended Columbia University where she received a M.A. degree in political science (1964) and a M.L.S. degree (1970). From June 1967 until her retirement in July 1999 she was a librarian at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.

The Karen J. Williams Correspondence consists of typed transcripts of letters to her parents Elmore Jackson and Elisabeth Averill Jackson written from Moscow where her husband, David L. Williams, was enrolled in the school of journalism at the University of Moscow during the 1964-1965 academic year. Correspondence pertains primarily to daily life in Moscow and describes living conditions including food preparation, laundry, and the availability of household and personal items. Of note are descriptions of "block" housing accommodations and housing inspections. The letters also discuss theatre and ballet performances that the Williams attended, visits to museums, factories, schools, a hospital, and monuments and trips to Leningrad, Kiev, and Central Asia. Also of interest are descriptions of Russian lessons and academic facilities at the University of Moscow.

Chronological.