Foregrounding Women in the Archives
Labor Archives and Research Center
San Francisco State University
Foregrounding Women in the Archives
Catherine Powell will discuss strategies archivists employ to bring women's history to the fore in their collections and finding aids, as well as the challenges of doing so in an era of limited resources. Drawing from her experience at the Labor Archives and Research Center, Catherine will provide examples that include: developing instructional partnerships with academic faculty that provide opportunities to highlight collections featuring women to a wide variety of students across disciplines and skill levels; deepening access through finding aids by correcting past oversights and enriching folder level descriptions in newly processed collections; creating collection bibliographies and suggested research topic lists focusing on women; and developing exhibitions and digitization projects concentrating on hidden collections.
As archives and libraries face increasing demands coupled with ongoing budget cuts, stewards of special collections are developing new processing methodologies to cope with a rapidly changing world. Learn more about how these changes will impact access to historic material, opening up more resources to researchers but also potentially making women that much harder to find in the archives.