Partnership Between Labor Studies, University Library, and National Experts Creates Archive of Women in the Building Trades
Last fall, Vivian Price, assistant professor and coordinator of labor studies, and Greg Williams, director of University Archives and Special Collections, received a $25,000 digital start-up grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for their project, "New Approaches: Tradeswomen Archive Project" (TAP). Their vision is to create a virtual museum administered through California State University, Dominguez Hills of photographs, documents, and other historical artifacts from women in the building trades.
Last month, a group of national archivists, scholars, and historians met in a symposium at CSU Dominguez Hills to discuss a second level proposal for another NEH grant to expand TAP, which is currently comprised of a Website, a Facebook presence, and a physical collection that is housed in the university archives. The collection of photographs, video, oral histories, original documents, and various three dimensional materials such as union pins and patches has been growing through online contacts and contributions gathered through TAP’s Facebook page.
Price says that the tradeswomen who made their groundbreaking entrance into blue-collar professions in the mid-1970s are now of retirement age and are ready to donate their memorabilia to an institution for posterity – and to overcome their isolation as pioneers in male-dominated fields.
“Women are also concerned that the next generation of women and men working in the trades will not know how institutions have changed, and how the culture of the male-dominated workplace has shifted because of women organizing,” she says. “[Also], women are concerned about the continued resistance to women working in skilled blue-collar jobs, and want to share their experiences and knowledge.”
Price has donated her personal collection of artifacts that span her professional life from the 1970s to the present as a former union electrician, political scientist, documentarian, and advocator. Of local historical interest are materials related to the Southern California Tradeswomen Network and women who constructed the Century Freeway (the 105 Freeway) in Los Angeles.
“CSU Dominguez Hills is in the heart of Los Angeles, where cutting-edge innovation in the labor movement is taking place,” says Price. “This is the only four-year university in Southern California to offer a bachelor's degree in labor studies, so research in [this area] is natural for our University Archives to initiate.”
TAP has already begun to benefit the CSU Dominguez Hills community and beyond, according to Price, who says that “having a growing collection in our library will provide a niche area for students to research.”
Veronica Ciocia-D'Aquino, an intern in the University Archives who recently earned her degree in library science from San Jose State, did the lion’s share of categorizing and sorting the original collection and developing a searching tool.
The project also enhanced the Long Beach lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning community through a collaboration with the nonprofit Mentoring Youth Through Empowerment (MYTE). Youth in the program interviewed tradeswomen during the course of a year, created collages from quotations and photos from the interviews, and then worked with local artists to create the final posters. These final results have recently been on display at Los Angeles City Hall to celebrate April’s Labor History Month and were also shown at the CSU Dominguez Hills Labor and Social Justice Fair that took place yesterday at the university.
Price and Williams have recently submitted a proposal for a Level II NEH Digital Start Up-Grant for $50,000. Price has also applied for an NEH faculty grant to bring international organizations into TAP. She says that in the spirit of the original tradeswomen, the project so far has benefited from a collaborative effort of archivists, scholars, tradeswomen, and activists.
“Some [participants have encouraged tradeswomen] to attend the tradeswomen conferences and initiate oral history projects and diary campaigns to produce materials that tradeswomen can upload electronically to our Website, send in physically to our library, or to a local collection that could be linked to our archives,” says Price. “What was also interesting was our discussion regarding our archives as a participatory curatorial project, in which the tradeswomen are involved in shaping the campaign to document themselves rather than being the objects of scholars' directions.”
- Joanie Harmon
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Monday, March 08, 2010
The University of South Alabama Archives' collection focus is on the photographic history, and social, cultural, legal, political, and architectural heritage of Mobile, Alabama, the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay, and the University of South Alabama. With 1,000,000 negatives in its possession, it has grown to have one of the largest photographic collections in the region. It is also strong in its coverage of the civil rights', political', environmental', and women's history of the area.
Carol Ellis
Archivist
University of South Alabama Archives
USA Springhill Avenue
Room 0722
Mobile AL 36688
ph: 251-434-3800
fx: 251-434-3622
cellis@jaguar1.usouthal.edu
visit our online digital image collection at http://www.alabamamosaic.org/collections.php
Monday, March 08, 2010
Celebrate the 100th anniversary of Woman Suffrage in Washington State (and of course, the history of Jello salad) with this delightful and historically researched print from Anagram Press.
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
The most recent issue (Fall 2009) of Microform & Imaging Review includes 8 articles and 4 reviews on the theme of "women's history digital collections."
De Gruyter's Reference Global site (http://www.reference-global.
The digitization projects that are showcased in this theme issue are improving access to primary sources that document women’s lives in places as diverse as Italy, Iran, and Muncie (“Middletown”), Indiana. Other collections focus on African American women at the University of Iowa, an underappreciated French American author, and the pioneering efforts of women in government and law.
Here's a list of the articles with brief annotations, along with links to the collections that are highlighted. The list also includes links to the full text of articles 2 and 7 (for this week only).
1. Women's History Collections: Digitization, Access, and the Future of Collaboration by Ken Middleton- Provides a brief introduction to the key themes of the issue.
2. The Middletown Women's History Collection. A Case Study in Building a Digital Collection of Women's History Resources by Amanda A. Hurford and Maren L. Read- An excellent case study from the perspective of an archivist and a digital projects librarian.
Link to Middletown Women's History Collection
http://libx.bsu.edu/cdm4/
Link to full text of the article:
http://www.reference-global.
3. Women's Worlds in Qajar Iran. A Digital Archive and Website Project of the History Department and Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Harvard University; and the Harvard College Library by Afsaneh Najmabadi- This project is bringing together widely dispersed primary sources, many of which remain in private family collections.
Link to grant announcement:
http://history.fas.harvard.
4. The Italian Digital Women's Library in the Context of Europe by Annamaria Tagliavini
The author describes how the focus on women's movements influenced the types of sources collected at the Italian Women's Library, as well as the Fragen Project, a collaborative project involving European women's libraries.
Link to the Italian Digital Women's Library and Fragen:
http://www.women.it/
5. Unveiling Women's History Online. Digitizing the Washington College of Law Historical Collection by Allison B. Zhang and Susan McElrath- The authors provide a wealth of information about the technical aspects of digitization: metadata; working with digitization vendors; developing a file naming convention. They also describe the custom viewer for scrapbooks.
Link to digital collection:
http://www.aladin.wrlc.org/
6. Digitization of the French Language Sidonie de la Houssaye Papers by Gina Costello
Costello covers microfilming the collection for preservation, and subsequent digitization of the microfilm to improve access.
Link to digital collection:
http://louisdl.louislibraries.
7. Chronicling African American Women Students at the University of Iowa by Shawn Averkamp
In addition to covering selection, digitization, and metadata issues, Averkamp outlines the timeline approach for providing a key entry point to the collection. Such an approach provides contextual information for small groups of items, rather than just for the collection as a whole.
Link to digital collection: http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/
Link to full text of the article:
http://www.reference-global.
8. A Few Good Women, 1969–1974. An Oral History Collection Experienced through an Online Curriculum for Grades 6–12 by Karla M. Schmit
Link to digital collection: http://www.afgw.libraries.psu.
This collection highlights the experiences of women in government positions during Richard Nixon's presidency. Schmit explores multiple options for making the collection relevant for students: WebQuests to compare "A Few Good Women" with women in government in other countries; compare interviews in the collection with their own interviews with women; and even play the roles of journalist Vera Glaser and President Nixon in Readers Theatre.
Review of Microfilm Collection
* Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance Archives, ca. 1972–1994 (reviewed by Phyllis Holman Weisbard)
Reviews of Commercial Digital Collections
* Manuscript Women’s Letters and Diaries from the American Antiquarian Society, 1750–1950 (reviewed by Jessica Moran)
* Perdita Manuscripts: Women Writers, 1500–1700 (reviewed by Robert Detmering)
* Women, War and Society, 1914–1918: From the Imperial War Museum, London (reviewed by Nina Clements)
Ken Middleton
Editor, Microform & Imaging Review
Box 013, Walker Library
Middle Tennessee State Univ.
Murfreesboro, TN 37132
(615) 904-8524
kmiddlet@mtsu.edu
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
March is Women’s History month and to celebrate, we’ve made the popular online collection, Women and Social Movements in the U.S., 1600-2000, Scholar's Edition, freely accessible for the entire month.
http://wass.alexanderstreet.
Winner of a 2004 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award
The Scholar's Edition also includes more than 40,000 pages of full-text sources, including:
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
San Jose State University Special Collections & Archives has been working to build collections that document women's social movements in the Bay Area and records that document women in politics. San Jose became known as the "Feminist Capital of the World" in 1974, when Janet Gray Hayes was the first woman to be elected mayor of a city with a population over 500,000. She and others created a female dominion in local politics from 1974-2000. Gray Hayes donated her political papers to University in 2003, and we continue to build on her legacy. A few examples include:
- Silicon Valley YWCA Records (1903-present)
- San Jose League of Women Voters (1945-2002)
- National Organization of Women San Jose Chapter (1971-2005)
We recently brought in the records of the Women's History Museum Records, which document the early the formation of the International Museum of Women. To learn more about IMW, visit their website at: http://www.imow.org/home/index
These are some of the happenings in our archive, and the WCRT leadership team would love to post information on your holdings and new collections. Consider sending a brief post and we will publish it for you.Danelle Moon
Director
SJSU Special Collections & Archives
Danelle.Moon@sjsu.edu
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
The Middletown Women’s History Digital Collection provides online access to archival materials documenting the experiences of women in Muncie, Indiana from the 1880s through the 1930s. The collection includes diaries, minutes, and correspondence, photographs and other documents from the wealth of resources available in Ball State University Libraries’ Archives and Special Collections. The collection is organized based on the six areas used by Helen and Robert Lynd in their seminal sociological studies of Muncie, or “Middletown,” conducted in the 1920s and 1930s.
This project was supported by a grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act, administered by the Indiana State Library. If you have any questions about this or other collections in the Digital Media Repository, please feel free to contact:
John Straw
Assistant Dean for Digital Initiatives and Special Collections and Digital Media Repository Project Coordinator
Ball State University Libraries
Alexander M. Bracken Library
Muncie, IN 47306
jstraw@bsu.edu
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