The Promise of Digital Archives?: Access Barriers to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality History
Speaker Bio
Bethany Anderson is Visiting Archival Operations and Reference Specialist in the University Archives at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prior to Illinois, she was an Archives Assistant at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin and an Information Resources Assistant at the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan. She has a master’s in Information Studies with a concentration in Archival Studies and Records Management from UT Austin, a master’s in Near Eastern Art and Archaeology from the University of Chicago, and a bachelor’s in Anthropology from the University of Michigan.
Abstract
How do researchers find archival sources on women, gender, and sexuality? What barriers and challenges do they encounter during the research process? Are researchers finding the archival material they seek? If not, are digital technologies and tools assuaging access barriers? This paper discusses these questions in light of a recent study I conducted in order to ascertain the needs of researchers of women’s, gender, and sexuality history. Using the data collected from a survey, this paper will examine whether digital tools and technologies employed by archivists and digital humanists are transforming such research, or whether we still have much terrain to cover. Likewise, we must understand which sources are being digitized and whether or not they favor certain viewpoints over others. By exploring not only which materials are being made accessible in the digital realm, but also how such materials are being made accessible as well as the pivotal role archivists play in the digitization and descriptive process, this paper will also consider how archives can further challenge masculinist and heteronormative epistemologies by aiding explorations in feminist knowledge as well as by critically assessing the promise of the “digital” and what that portends for a history of women, gender, and sexuality.
The Promise of Digital Archives?: Access Barriers to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality History
Developments in Digital Women's History
How do researchers find archival sources on women, gender, and sexuality? What barriers and challenges do they encounter during the research process? Are researchers finding the archival material they seek? If not, are digital technologies and tools assuaging access barriers? This paper discusses these questions in light of a recent study I conducted in order to ascertain the needs of researchers of women’s, gender, and sexuality history. Using the data collected from a survey, this paper will examine whether digital tools and technologies employed by archivists and digital humanists are transforming such research, or whether we still have much terrain to cover. Likewise, we must understand which sources are being digitized and whether or not they favor certain viewpoints over others. By exploring not only which materials are being made accessible in the digital realm, but also how such materials are being made accessible as well as the pivotal role archivists play in the digitization and descriptive process, this paper will also consider how archives can further challenge masculinist and heteronormative epistemologies by aiding explorations in feminist knowledge as well as by critically assessing the promise of the “digital” and what that portends for a history of women, gender, and sexuality.