Information Sources in Women's Studies and Feminism 9783110950298, 9783598244407

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GUIDES T O I N F O R M A T I O N SOURCES

A series under the General Editorship la C. Mcllwaine, M.W. Hill and Nancy J. Williamson

of

Other titles available include: Information Sources for the Press and Broadcast Media edited by Sarah Adair Information Sources in Architecture and Construction (Second edition) edited by Valerie J. Nurcombe Information Sources in Art, Art History and Design edited by Simon Ford Information Sources in Cartography edited by C.R. Perkins and R.B. Barry Information Sources in Chemistry (Fourth edition) edited by R.T. Bottle and J.F.B. Rowland Information Sources in Development Studies edited by Sheila Allcock Information Sources in Engineering edited by Ken Mildren and Peter Hicks Information Sources in Environmental Protection edited by Selwyn Eagle and Judith Deschamps Information Sources in Finance and Banking by Ray Lester Information Sources in Grey Literature (Third edition) C.P. Auger Information Sources in Information Technology edited by David Haynes Information Sources in Law (Second edition) edited by Jules Winterton and Elizabeth M. Moys Information Sources in Metallic Materials edited by M.N. Patten Information Sources in Official Publications edited by Valerie J. Nurcombe Information Sources in Patents edited by C.P. Auger Information Sources in Physics (Third edition) edited by Dennis F. Shaw Information Sources in Polymers and Plastics edited by R.T. Adkins Information Sources in Sport and Leisure edited by Michele Shoebridge Information Sources in the Earth Sciences (Second edition) edited by David N. Wood, Joan E. Hardy and Anthony P. Harvey Information Sources in the Life Sciences (Fourth edition) edited by H.V. Wyatt Information Sources in the Social Sciences edited by David Fisher, Sandra P. Price and Terry Hanstock

GUIDES T O INFORMATION SOURCES

Information Sources in

Women's Studies and Feminism

Editor Hope A. Olson

К · G · Saur München 2002

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Information sources in women's studies and feminism / ed. Hope A. Olson. - München : Saur, 2002 (Guides to information sources) ISBN 3-598-24440-1

Printed on acid-free paper © 2002 K. G. Saur Verlag GmbH, München All Rights Strictly Reserved N o part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover design by Pollett and Cole Typesetting by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd., Chippenham, Wiltshire ISBN 3-598-24440-1

Contents

Series editor's foreword Preface

vii xi

Introduction

xv

ISSUES OF F O R M 1 2 3

4

5

Archival materials Anna Greening, UK Serials Kristin H. Gerhard, Iowa State University, USA Electronic resources Jacquelyn Marie, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA and Nancy Kushigian, University of California, Davis, USA Grassroots networks and information in an African context Jane Bennett and Jennifer Radloff, African Gender Institute, University of Cape Town, South Africa The collection and cataloguing of grey literature Katarina Blomqvist and Jytte Nielsen, KVINFO: Centre for Information от Kvinde- og Kensforskning, Copenhagen, Denmark

3 22 35

46

67

ISSUES OF INFORMATION ACCESS 6

Feminist values and the canon question: shaping library collections and electronic gateways to information in women's studies Susan E. Searing, University of Illinois, USA

79

CONTENTS 7

If it's there, can you find it? Bibliographic control

100

Hope A. Olson, University of Alberta, Canada ISSUES OF DIVERSITY 8

Information sources for a diverse audience: the case of HIV/AIDS

117

Maria Salet Ferreira Novellino, National School of Statistics, Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 9

Lesbian sources

128

Petra Brits, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa 10

Spreading the messages and furthering the boundaries: women's information resources from India

134

Anju Vyas, Centre for Women's Development Studies, New Delhi, India 11

Indigenous women's information

154

Marjorie Farstad, Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, Canada CONCLUSION 12

The power of naming

169

Rosi Braidotti, Faculteit der Letteren, Vakgroep Vrouwenstudies, Universiteit Utrecht, Netherlands Index

179

Series editors' foreword

The second half of the 20th century has been characterized by the recognition that our style of life depends on acquiring and using information effectively. It has always been so, but only in the information society has the extent of the dependence been recognized and the development of technologies for handling information become a priority. Since the early 1990s the Internet and its adjunct the World Wide Web have transformed information retrieval. Online searching, which started in the late 60s and early 70s as a useful supplement for bibliographic retrieval, has become a means of finding directly current information of every conceivable kind. Networked computers enable us to track down, select, process and store more information more skilfully and transmit, via an intranet perhaps, more rapidly than we could have dreamt possible even 20 years ago. Yet the irony still exists that, while we are able to do all this and are assailed from all sides by great masses of information, ensuring that one has what one needs just when one wants it is frequently just as difficult as ever. Knowledge may, as Johnson said in the well known quotation, be of two kinds, but information, in contrast, is of many kinds and most of it is, for each individual, knowable only after much patient searching. The aim of each Guide in this series is simple. It is to reduce the time which needs to be spent on that patient searching; to recommend the best starting point and sources most likely to yield the desired information. Like all subject and sector guides, the sources discussed have had to be selected, and the criteria for selection will be given by the individual editors and will differ from subject to subject. However, the overall objective is constant; that of providing a way into a subject to those new to the field or to identify major new or possibly unexplored sources to those already familiar with it. The Internet now gives access to many new sources and to an overwhelming mass of information, some well organized and easy to interrogate, much incoherent and unorganized. Further, the great output of new

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SERIES E D I T O R ' S F O R E W O R D

information from the media, advertising, meetings and conferences, letters, internal reports, office memoranda, magazines, junk mail, electronic mail, fax, bulletin boards etc. inevitably tend to make one reluctant to add to the load on the mind and memory by consulting books and journals. Yet they, and the other traditional types of printed material, remain for many purposes the most reliable sources of information. Despite all the information that is instantly accessible via the new technologies one still has to look things up in databooks, monographs, journals, patent specifications, standards, reports both official and commercial, and on maps and in atlases. Permanent recording of facts, theories and opinions is still carried out primarily by publishing in printed form. Musicians still work from printed scores even though they are helped by sound recordings. Sailors still use printed charts and tide tables even though they have satellite directed position fixing devices and radar and sonar equipment. However, thanks to computerized indexes, online and C D - R O M , searching the huge bulk of technical literature to draw up a list of references can be undertaken reasonably quickly. The result, all too often, can still be a formidably long list, of which a knowledge of the nature and structure of information sources in that field can be used to put it in order of likely value. It is rarely necessary to consult everything that has been published on the topic of a search. When attempting to prove that an invention is genuinely novel, a complete search may seem necessary, but even then it is common to search only obvious sources and leave it to anyone wishing to oppose the grant of a patent to bear the cost of hunting for a prior disclosure in some obscure journal. Usually, much proves to be irrelevant to the particular aspect of our interest and whatever is relevant may be unsound. Some publications are sadly lacking in important detail and present broad generalizations flimsily bridged with arches of waffle. In any academic field there is a 'pecking order' of journals so that articles in one journal may be assumed to be of a higher or lower calibre than those in another. Those experienced in the field know these things. Research scientists soon learn, as it is part of their training, the degree of reliance they can place on information from co-workers elsewhere, on reports of research by new and (to them) unknown researchers on data compilations and on manufacturers of equipment. Information workers, particularly when working in a field other than their own, face very serious problems as they try to compile, probably from several sources a report on which a client may base important actions. Even the librarian, faced only with recommending two or three books or journal articles, meets the same problem though less acutely. In the K. G. Saur Guides to Information Sources we aim to bring you the knowledge and experience of specialists in the field. Each author regularly uses the information sources and services described and any tricks of the trade that the author has learnt are passed on.

SERIES E D I T O R ' S F O R E W O R D

ix^

Nowadays, two major problems face those who are embarking upon research or who are in charge of collections of information of every kind. One is the increasingly specialized knowledge of the user and the concomitant ignorance of other potentially useful disciplines. The second problem is the trend towards cross-disciplinary studies. This has led to a great mixing of academic programmes - and a number of imprecisely defined fields of study. Courses are offered in Environmental Studies, Women's Studies, Communication Studies or Area Studies, and these are the forcing ground for research. The editors are only too aware of the difficulties raised by those requiring information from such hybrid subject fields and this approach, too, is being handled in the series alongside the traditional 'hard disciplines'. Guides to the literature and other sources of information have a long and honoured history. Some of the old ones remain valuable for finding information still valid but not repeated in modern information sources. Where appropriate these are included in the updated Guides of this series along with the wealth of evaluated new sources which make new editions necessary. Michael Hill la Mcllwaine Nancy Williamson

Preface

Information Sources in Women's Studies and Feminism addresses the complexities of finding resources in women's studies and feminist literature. This area is particularly problematic for information seekers in that it is interdisciplinary, dynamic and (even now) unconventional. The purpose of this book is to provide general background on information in the area, pointers to major sources and active strategies for people seeking information in the domains of women's studies and feminism. Because these areas are both academic fields and social movements informed by political and ethical values, this guide to the resources is keyed to the issues of women's studies and feminism and of the information itself. While their prominence fluctuates, women's studies and feminism have proven themselves fixtures of academic discourse. The two individually and combined have been considered fields of study, but they also overlap with virtually every traditional discipline found in the academy. The sources for women's studies and feminism are not limited to traditional academic genres. Different use is made in this area of government and nongovernmental organizations' (NGO's) publications and more legitimacy is given to grey literature and popular literature than in other areas of the academy. Therefore, a book that treats issues of information as well as specific sources is important to researchers and activists in the area. Information Sources in Women's Studies and Feminism is aimed at three contexts. The first is an academic context where this book will be useful to graduate and undergraduate students in women's studies or using a feminist perspective in other fields. Typically, women's studies prgrammes in universities are multidisciplinary, having core courses identified specifically as women's studies and including other courses in traditional departments which are focussed on gender. So even if women's studies courses as such are few in number, the cross-listed courses are likely to be numerous. This book would be useful to students in both types of courses. Faculty have a parallel range of information needs and can use the

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PREFACE

insights and techniques in this book for help in keeping current with the ever-changing information in their areas of specialization as well as in embarking on new areas. The second context is that of social and political organizations at local, national, regional and global levels. Gathering information for understanding issues, lobbying, documenting problems and a whole range of other tasks is as problematic as finding information for academic purposes. Information Sources in Women's Studies and Feminism is intended to assist organizers, activists and advocates in this context as well. Finally, if found in public libraries (and academic libraries with access to the public) it will help women who are beginning to explore issues of gender to find specific topics on which they want to focus. This final group will include a wide range from those who have encountered particular issues (e.g. sexual harassment at work) to independent researchers (e.g. local historians). Because women's studies as a field and feminism as a critical stance both cross the boundaries of the academy into many other communities, these three contexts blur into each other. Within these three contexts, Information Sources in Women's Studies and Feminism will be useful not only to those seeking information, but also to those whose job it is to provide access to information. These may be professionals or others in positions of responsibility who recognize the importance of effective access. The three primary groups of professional staff who will find this volume useful are: reference librarians, women's studies librarians focussed on collection development, and information professionals in agencies addressing women's issues (e.g. women in development or violence against women). Additionally, many women's information centres are part of larger organizations that are commonly run on a tight budget. Hence, the information centres are often managed by staff with other areas of expertise. Information Sources in Women's Studies and Feminism will enable these staff members to acquire a greater understanding of the topic and practical abilities in organizing and finding information. Information Sources in Women's Studies and Feminism assumes no particular academic skills on the part of readers since it is to be accessible to people outside of the academy. It will also be accessible to readers previously unfamiliar with the field since novices are even more likely to need assistance than others. In addition, Information Sources in Women's Studies and Feminism is intended for an international audience, so an effort has been made to write without presuming a familiarity with the local circumstances of the contributors. Other guides to women's studies resources have been organized according to discipline or medium. Many guides currently in print focus on women's studies or feminist work within a specific discipline. Information Sources in Women's Studies and Feminism is organized around

PREFACE

xiii^

issues of format, issues of access and issues of content to complement earlier guides. It offers guidance dealing somewhat less with specific sources, but considerably more with how resources in this area operate and techniques for finding information. One of the challenges in compiling Information Sources in Women's Studies and Feminism has been to make it as relevant as possible to a diverse, international audience. In that context, I particularly want to thank the organizers (especially the Internationaal Archief van de Vrouwenbeweging - IIAV) of the KnowHow: Conference on the World of Women's Information held in Amsterdam in 1998. That conference and its followup has given me the opportunity to come into contact with many of the contributors to this volume and inspired its scope. I would also like to thank la Mcllwaine and Nancy Williamson for their support in proposing this volume; the research assistants who contributed both intelligent labour and patience: Shona Dippie, Juliet Nielsen, and especially Angela Kublik; the editors who advised and assisted in this book's production: Linda Hajdukiewicz, Kristin Süsser and especially Geraldine Turpie; the copy editor, Louise Tester; the indexer, Noeline Bridge; Gust Olson and all of the contributors for the richness of this collection. Hope A. Olson Edmonton, Alberta, Canada May 2001

Introduction

PURPOSE AND AUDIENCE The purpose of this book is to offer background knowledge about resources in the area of women's studies and feminism, highlight major sources of information and offer techniques for finding information. It will be useful to students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, to faculty embarking on new facets of research or designing courses in new areas, to people working in community, national or international organizations concerned with women's well-being, and to individuals with a personal interest in this area. Guides to the literature of any field have typically been organized by the format of material or by subdiscipline. This volume is organized somewhat differently for two reasons. First, previously published guides to materials in women's studies already fulfill the task of approaching the field by format, topic or discipline. Second, women's studies is a dynamic, interdisciplinary and unconventional field that also benefits from an unconventional approach. Therefore, the structure of this volume reflects the issues prominent in discussions of women's studies and in the related political and theoretical discourses of feminism. It is difficult to imagine feminists in any role - undergraduate to senior faculty, grassroots organizer to international official - who would search for information without an agenda. Therefore, to address the issues related to access to women's information is to speak in a discourse familiar to this audience.

W O M E N ' S STUDIES AND FEMINISM The title of this book is one indicator of this discourse, but what is behind it is also indicative of the diversity of the field. Not only is there the range

•*xvi

INTRODUCTION

of roles that readers of this book will bring, there are also cultural and political stories to be told in naming what we are doing. The terms in the title: 'women's studies' and 'feminism' are in themselves problematic at the same time that they are intended to address problems. Women's studies as a field falls in the academic periphery of area studies. In tandem with African American studies, Asian studies, Native studies and other similar areas, women's studies is still often regarded as not being a real discipline and, therefore, not to be taken seriously. In reality it is not a discipline, but has escaped those boundaries that we have inherited from the medieval scholastics even though that escape has resulted in its marginalization. So as a part of the academy its content is problematic. The name, women's studies, is also problematic. In some places the term 'gender studies' is preferred as being more inclusive, especially in relation to sexuality. In other contexts, the term 'gender studies' is used to dilute women's studies by implying that the issues concerning men are of the same sort as issues concerning women. It is a way of minimizing women's issues. This book does not attempt to cover gender studies in the first inclusive sense in any comprehensive way, so the term 'women's studies' has been used. The second term, 'feminism' is also problematic. Feminism as most of us know it has grown from the women's liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s. That movement was largely white, middle class, educated, and embedded in the ideologies of a dominant culture. As such it has been criticized by women of colour, lesbians, working class women, poor women, and others. Further, it has different meanings for women from Africa, Asia and Latin America than for women from Europe, N o r t h America and Australia. Most women who identify themselves as feminists have recognized these problems and addressed them with varying degrees of success. Various feminist perspectives have qualified the term feminism - liberal feminism, socialist feminism, radical feminism, black feminism, and so forth. A few new terms such as 'womanism' have arisen, but no one term has taken over from the term 'feminism'. Therefore, this book continues to use the word feminism.

A P P R O A C H AND

STRUCTURE

The issues addressed in this volume are drawn from the concerns of a range of women's studies and feminist communities. However, they also reflect concerns of access to information familiar to librarians and other information providers. The structure of this volume and its contributors are indicative of the diversity of issues and participants in women's studies and feminism. Only in this way can such a volume go beyond a mainstream view. The book is divided into three sections by the type of issue addressed: issues of form, issues of information access and issues of diversity.

INTRODUCTION

xvii^

Issues of form Information for women's studies research and feminist action often comes in different forms than mainstream information. In addition, conventional forms take on different characteristics in this field. Exploring different media and different sources of information is useful to scholars and others doing work in this area. Three different media that are important sources in women's studies and feminism are archival materials, serials and electronic resources. They are needed to recover a largely erased or well-hidden past, to keep up with rapidly changing issues and to address the digital world of the present and future. In chapter one, Anna Greening explores the problematic area of archival materials. Materials preserved in archives have typically reflected the values of the larger society. Hence, women have been poorly represented in many archival collections. These materials are the historical evidence of what women were doing in periods when our activities and contributions were largely ignored by recorders of history. Much of this information was not preserved and knowing how to find archives that include records of women's lives is important for historians and other researchers trying to define women's roles in the past and how they affect the present. Anna Greening, now at All Hallows by the Tower, London, is an archivist of considerable experience, having worked at the Fawcett Library as well as other archives where evidence of women requires more ingenuity to find. In this chapter, she leads us through the range of types of materials, their organization and ideas for locating them in conventional archives as well as specialized collections. In chapter two, Kristin H. Gerhard lays a thread through the labyrinth of serial publications. Women's studies and feminist movements have generated newspapers, magazines and academic journals in abundance. As with any political discourse, some of these have been ephemeral while others have continued to provide a venue for the discussion of issues and the development of scholarship. In addition, journals in many academic disciplines publish special issues on feminist perspectives. Understanding what these various serials have to offer scholars and others is important in tracking information in women's studies. Kristin Gerhard is women's studies librarian at Iowa State University in the United States. She is not only a practicing professional with relevant experience, but also a researcher in the area of collection of and access to women's studies materials. In chapter three, Jacqueline Marie and Nancy Kushigian guide our evaluation of electronic resources with a focus on the Internet. Feminists have an ambivalent relationship with electronic sources of information, particularly the Internet. Technology is seen by many and has traditionally been a masculine domain. However, its flexibility offers possibilities for moving outside of conventional information sources. The Internet and World Wide Web in particular are too often seen in dichotomous terms as

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INTRODUCTION

either patriarchal plot or panacea. Understanding electronic sources is of ever increasing importance in all areas, but in women's studies it has conflicting values that make it crucial to understand this information source. Jacqueline Marie has been women's studies librarian at the University of California, Santa Cruz and is now embarking on oral history projects to document gay and lesbian history in the US and elsewhere. Nancy Kushigian is women's studies librarian at the University of California, Davis and is the general editor of the British Women Romantic Poets Project making texts available via the World Wide Web. In addition to information in these different media, issues of form are also concerned with sources of information. Two sources are of particular interest in the area of women's studies and feminism: local and grassroots organizations and governmental and non-governmental organizations. In chapter four, Jane Bennett and Jennifer Radloff uncover the richness of information in and from local and grassroots organizations. As discussed earlier, women's studies is closely linked to feminist movements. Productive relations with women active in communities is of constant interest to women's studies scholars. Therefore, the information produced and collected by local and grassroots organizations is extremely important. This information is not typically collected by conventional libraries or indexed in published lists. Understanding the nature of such information and how to find it is of use to activists and advocates in these organizations and vital to much of what women's studies scholars do. Jane Bennett and Jennifer Radloff, both with the African Gender Institute at the University of Cape Town, contextualize their discussion in examples from African feminist communities. In chapter five, Katarina Blomqvist and Jytte Nielsen provide an understanding of grey literature, in particular the role of information from governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The 1995 United Nations Conference on Women and the parallel N G O meeting, both held in Beijing, enhanced the recognition of publications of governments and N G O s as key sources of information for women's studies. Finding these publications is more complex than finding resources from commercial publishers, yet they are essential in documenting women's conditions and institutional commitments worldwide. Katarina Blomqvist and Jytte Nielsen describe the issues from the vantage point of KVINFO, the Danish information and documentation centre for research on women and gender where they are research librarian and head of the library respectively.

Issues of information access The work of librarians and other information professionals has an immense impact on access to any kind of information. In the case of resources for women's studies or any other interdisciplinary or marginal-

INTRODUCTION

xix^

ized area, conventional standards can hinder access as much as they can facilitate it. Knowing how standards operate and their effect on women's studies materials will assist scholars and others in locating information. In chapter six, Susan E. Searing examines how libraries and other information agencies often choose what to include in their collections through standard practices that are effective in conventional displines. However, these same practices may operate in a negative way when the collections need to represent areas outside of mainstream thought. The choice of what to include in a collection often represents the canon - the accepted classics - in a given field. If this pattern is allowed to predominate, women's studies materials as interdisciplinary and unconventional will not be adequately represented in conventional collections. It is important for those seeking such information to understand what to expect and for professionals to address the problems. Susan Searing is responsible for library and information science and women's studies collections at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she is also an associate professor of library administration. In chapter seven, I explore the organization of information through catalogues and indexes and its effect on how readily that information may be found. The way information is represented in such sources establishes its context and, thus, affects how it is perceived. Some topics are not specified in standard vocabularies and, therefore, cannot be located through standard sources. Others are gathered together with such a mixture of topics that they must be laboriously distilled from what is irrelevant. Still others are given headings (names) that are pejorative or sexist. The ability to navigate around such barriers and create alternatives to them is essential to finding women's studies information. I come to this topic after having studied, practiced, managed, taught and researched cataloguing and classification in a variety of contexts over the last 29 years.

Issues of diversity During the 1980's, feminist movements in Europe and North America were criticized for their narrow scope as mentioned above. Since then there has been considerable focus on diversity in women's studies in relation to race, ethnicity, sexuality and other factors. This section will not address particular groups, but will look at instances of diverse and particular information needs and how they are or might be met. Each of them presents both problems and successes. In chapter eight, Maria Salet Ferreira Novellino proposes a theoretical model for fulfilling the information needs of a diverse set of users. Her example is the range of different reasons and needs for HIV/AIDS information. A single agency may serve scholars, professionals, activists, those directly affected, their friends and families, and people with general inter-

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INTRODUCTION

est. How the sources overlap and diverge is an important issue for finding relevant information. Maria Salet Ferreira Novellino has been responsible for the documentation centre of the Brazilian Interdisciplinary AIDS Association and is now located at the National School of Statistics, Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In chapter nine, Petra Brits discusses the difficulties of researching lesbian history, especially in relation to archival sources. Finding lesbian sources is a problem of being doubly marginalized. Homophobia has been called the last acceptable bias. Coupling that bias with the biases encountered by women creates two barriers in locating information. Institutions that collect information about women in general may not focus their usually scarce resources on information about lesbians. Further, there is both commonality and difference of interest between lesbians and gay men, which have to be addressed in collections focussing on both lesbian and gay resources. Issues such as these give those seeking lesbian sources of information an extra challenge. As a graduate student doing research for her thesis at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa, Petra Brits discovered the Gay and Lesbian Archives of South Africa. Her description of the problems she faced and how she addressed them with the help of those archives not only explains the concerns encountered in finding material on lesbian topics, it also brings the voice of a researcher aware of information issues to this collection. In chapter ten, Anju Vyas of the Centre for Women's Development Studies (New Delhi) discusses information resources for, by and about women in India. India is an excellent example of a country and its cultures that have developed a richness of information resources. While cooperative with women in other countries, Indian feminists are also largely self-sufficient in regard to information. This chapter is one example of literature about women of colour that breaks down the misconceptions often conveyed to western/northern readers. It clearly defines a strong feminist tradition with its own organizations and its own literature operating independently from what is mainstream in a globalized perception of culture. Women of colour obviously do not form a homogeneous group. Therefore, to suggest that information about "them" can be found in particular places is absurd. The complexity of information for and about women in any culture reflects women's realities and requires guidance to navigate. India's many cultures illustrate a different notion of diversity and an escape from the idea that European/North American culture is mainstream in any way except as it exerts economic and, hence, political power. In chapter eleven, Marjorie Farstad examines how women from cultures indigenous to countries heavily populated by colonial peoples have different cultural concepts of information. European conceptions, augmented by North American variants, have become hegemonic discourses in the world's information structures. For some groups of marginalized women the epistemologies of European-based cultures have become their

INTRODUCTION

xxi^

vernacular. However, for women in indigenous or aboriginal cultures different concepts of knowledge and information have been maintained. The need to provide culturally relevant information in a culturally relevant manner is a concern increasingly recognized in many locations. Marjorie Farstad speaks from the perspective of Canadian Aboriginal women and from her familiarity with resources gained as the electronic publications officer of the Canadian Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. For the conclusion of this book, Rosi Braidotti, reprises the talk she gave at the KnowHow Conference on the World of Women's Informaton held in 1998 in the Netherlands. In it she links the theoretical, political and practical importance of access to information for women. She looks at the new information technologies as they affect sustainability and the global economy and the ways in which these powerful discourses influence the politics of naming information. Rosi Braidotti is a widely recognized feminist theorist at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. Her relation of what might be called 'high theory' to issues of information access is an astute and fitting conclusion to this exploration of information resources for women's studies and feminism.

VOICES OF THE

AUTHORS

Throughout the twelve chapters of this book the authors' voices are clearly audible. Rather than homogenize our styles, as editor I have tried to do no more than make them readily readable across contexts. As authors we are of different nationalities - American, Brazilian, Canadian, Danish, Dutch, English, Indian, Italian, South African, Swedish (not necessarily representing the countries in which we live). We identify with groups of women defined by a variety of characteristics - Aboriginal women, lesbians, librarians, archivists, professors, information specialists in different roles, pragmatists, poststructuralists. We work for NGOs, governments, archives and universities. We write in different styles and come from different traditions of how to use and explain information resources. Collectively we have feminisms in common - not a uniform feminism, but a variety of different feminisms drawn together by a commitment to work on behalf of women. It is a concatenation of expertise, perspectives and voices that I have found exciting as well as enlightening and am privileged to help bring to you.

Issues of Form

Archival materials Anna

•

Greening

INTRODUCTION

In 1991 I was asked whether women's archives should be treated differently from other archives. My rather priggish reply was that they should of course be treated with the same intellectual rigour as any archives anywhere. Ten years on I would qualify that response in this - still - alternative discourse by adding the need for curatorial sensitivity, based on an appraisal of the rarity value of the cultural context surrounding an archival collection. This context may present itself as 'resource material' collected as part of an archive( 1), or published material associated with a particular organization(2). Women-centred archives and records may differ in kind and presentation from 'traditional' archives, especially the records of individuals and groups involved in the Women's Liberation Movement (late 1960s to mid-1980s). Marginalia, memorabilia and what might be called sentimentalia should not be disregarded. New perspectives brought to archival research by the interdisciplinary approach of women's studies can only enrich historical discourse. Woman-centred archivists must respond to this challenge. It has become an accepted truth that women's history and the significance of individual women has been submerged in the culture of nations over centuries. However rebarbative some finding aids may appear in government, regional or local authority and other specialist archives, there are useful approaches for uncovering woman-related material, discussed at the end of this chapter. The United Kingdom (UK) is currently benefiting from a political climate promoting cultural and social inclusivity and access to life-long learning for all, supported with considerable tranches of funding, some of which has found its way to the women's sector(3). Feminists working within the archival and other information professions are bringing their world view to the collections they administer and the old male bias in catalogues and indexes is losing ground(4). Over the last quarter-century or

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ARCHIVAL

MATERIALS

so alternative views o f history from social and family historians have become ever more popular in the U K , and aspects of women's history are studied at school as part of the National Curriculum. Automation and especially the W o r l d Wide W e b have revolutionized the visibility of w o m a n centred resources, bringing a new set of challenges and opportunities to the archival researcher. Unfortunately there appears to be a recent tendency in British universities for women's history to be subsumed into androcentric Gender Studies departments - a sign of a new submergence to be guarded against? It should be balanced against increased provision within traditional university syllabuses for a 'woman's course option'. T h e battle for women's equal and fair representation in our cultural heritage is by no means over. For some years to come there will be a place for specialist women-centred archives and libraries, and a need for truffle-hunting research skills. Different nations and individual institutions have different strategies and present themselves at different stages of cultural feminization through the absence or presence, nature, kind and treatment of woman-centred resources - this is especially true of archives, which tend to surface at a certain stage of consciousness of feminist activism (usually, but not always, quite some time after the act), and which are very demanding and resourcehungry to administer effectively.

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RECORD TYPES

Official and public records Official records vary widely in jurisdiction and range and need to be approached cautiously by women-centred researchers, as relevant information may be sparse and is likely to contain gender bias. It may be like looking for a needle in a haystack except when researching 'directly relevant' areas such as women's work or prostitution. These archives and records are usually administered and made available to researchers in publicly funded record offices. Records may be of international bodies such as the League of Nations or European E c o n o m i c Community, national institutions such as colonial administrations, government departments, Parliament/Houses of Representatives and the higher judiciary, or have a local basis in a parish, town, county, district, area, metropolitan or other regional authority. Other 'public' official records may include health authorities, nationalized industries, social services and state education at all levels. Religious records may be official in a country with an established church such as England, but are usually administered separately and researchers should contact the relevant religious authority unless records have been deposited elsewhere. Notwithstanding Freedom of Information

R E C O R D TYPES

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legislation, access to these sources is usually heavily filtered, even if only by staffing levels. Archival cataloguing and indexing is very time- and staffhungry work and archival repositories, no matter how well-found, may have to sacrifice depth of cataloguing to breadth, and in favour of providing support in the search room rather than access via the World Wide Web through costly automation projects. Archives are physically bulky and may have been sampled so that not all files survive. There may be statutory c!osures(5). Some records will be permanently closed to researchers, or have been weeded and censored to hide politically sensitive information. When and where the majority of women of a particular nation or social minority have no official voice there may be very little direct or undifferentiated extant information on them, and it will have to be winnowed from a large mass of documentation. Women may be hidden among statistics and they will be treated as objects rather than subjects by the original record compilers. When looking at archives it is of prime importance to ask who compiled them, and for what purpose, as this will colour any later interpretation. Women's direct voices may be quoted in official documents such as published Royal Commissions or governmental Inquiries - although the original working papers may not have survived. Women also appear in case law, marriage and property settlements, local law courts, town and village administration if engaged in trade or manufacture and church courts with administration over morals. In such records women are viewed through an official, male filter, either hostile (as in records involving so-called witchcraft or adultery) or callous to modern sensibilities(6). Where women appear as statistics in documents like parish registers or official censuses, general facts about the circumstances of their lives over a period of time may be inferred. Unfiltered women's voices start to appear when they take up official positions of responsibility such as in local government, or when appointed to a Royal Commission(7). When women campaign for political rights their voices may be muffled by oblique representation in official documents as problematic, criminal or terrorist. Women have gradually infiltrated the public life of nations over the last 1 5 0 years, and their voice is now heard more directly working within the Establishment. It is still a minority voice and some women work within the male hegemony rather than to promote women's interests - these women are unlikely to leave woman-centred or feminist records behind them (but of course their actions are open to feminist interpretation).

Semi-private papers Like state papers, women's correspondence, diaries and other material are to be found within family, estate or administrators' records. Wives, mothers and daughters of statesmen, land-owners and the nobility led