Working Group 3

Working Group 3

Information and dissemination: infrastructures and networks in Europe and beyond

First meeting at Spring conference Utrecht, April 9, 2011

The focus of the working group is:

• making women and gender information and research accessible, visible and available,
• working towards cooperation and exchange between academia and women/gender information and documentation centres, e.g by organizing encounters,
• actively promoting the use of relevant resources such as AtGender products,
• representing the interests of information and documentation centres on gender and related issue within AtGender,
• bringing the competence within these centres into the work of AtGender especially when it comes to information strategies.

This working group is explicitly transversal, which means that the goal is to have involvement of researchers, students, activists, policymakers as well as information and resource centres in the group.

Proposals by working group 3

1) Proposal for session/workshop or panel on Budapest conference: How can researchers benefit from the services of information centres and women’s libraries in Europe?

No budget involved, free working time of participants in the group.

This activity aims to:

• present ways for researchers to make their research results available for a wider audience
• show how information centres and women’s libraries can be a resource both for finding information as well as connecting with other researchers, practitioners, policy makers etc all over Europe
• show practical tools and tips for presentation on the web as well as how to make us of the new possibilities that online communication, social media etc provides

The project will strengthen ATGENDER by making networks, connections stronger between academia and the wider community.

2) Making women and gender information and resources visible and accessible on the Atgender website

Time frame: Till October 2011

No budget involved. Volunteer work.

The project aims to:

• Make visible the women and gender information resources at the AtGender website
• Mapping women and gender information centres in Google map
• Create a new page “Resources” with links to all European Women and Gender information ad documentation  resources.
• List of all institutional Members in AtGender

The project will strengthen AtGender by:

• showing the diversity of the Network and enlarge the network.
• providing a platform for disseminating researching results and developing new projects.
• bring together and connect researchers, activists, gender equality units, women and gender information specialists.

3) Book proposal Teaching Gender Series

Preliminary title: ‘Teaching (in) libraries and archives’

Students of gender studies are expected to know their way around libraries and archives, but are rarely invited to critically reflect on and engage with these spaces as political, gendered knowledge spaces. This volume aims to fill that gap, by offering a consideration of (women’s) libraries and archives from different and complementary perspectives. The goal of the volume is to combine and connect theoretical questions concerning power, knowledge and gender to feminist library practices. It will aim to make teachers aware of the analogies between gender studies and women’s libraries and archives, and of the responsibilities involved in preserving and disseminating feminist knowledge. It will showcase the library as a lively, fast changing, and thoroughly political space.

Possible topics may include:

• the exclusion and inclusion of women’s work from libraries and archives (libraries and canonization);
• an overview the history of library work in Europe and reflections on the feminization of the library profession;
• the parallel histories of gender studies and women’s libraries;
• strategies used by/in/through women’s libraries and archives for dealing with the politics of remembering;
• the library as metaphor and myth, in relation to identity;
• questions around order and power
• new library paradigms: libraries as mediators, knowledge brokers, networks  (cf. FRAGEN network);
• concrete examples of dilemma’s inherent to library work  – practitioner insights into feminist librarianship.

The volume will definitely include an annex with references to relevant databases for gender studies teachers, students and researchers.

Time frame: The aim is to have the volume published in November 2012

Relevance for the ATGender network & goals:

This book will add to the visibility of women’s libraries and archives, and in bridging the gap between feminist theory and feminist practice, will help to improve the relevance and quality of gender studies teaching. The project is a true synthesis of Research, Education and Documentation, as per the core aims of ATGender.

If you would like to join this group please send a request to info@atgender.eu
Please, Include the Working Group number in the subject area + “REQUEST”