The Research Committee
of the Women’s Studies Section of ACRL became an official committee
in 2001. It was charged to identify needed research, encourage collaboration
in research, facilitate the acquisition of skills related to research
and publishing, and promote an awareness of existing and ongoing research
related or applicable to Women’s Studies librarianship. In order to
determine potential research areas, the committee embarked on a project
to first identify the research that had previously been conducted. This
project resulted in the “Bibliography of Scholarship
on Women’s Studies Librarianship.” After
collating this initial bibliography, the committee reexamined each
citation to further explore the research articles and research questions
as a means to identify research that needed to be revisited as well
as areas of study that had never been researched. This effort, along
with brainstorming about cutting edge and emerging issues in women’s
studies and librarianship, resulted in this research agenda.
The research agenda
is divided into two headings: intellectual access and professional
issues. The subheadings under intellectual access all relate to the
collection, maintenance, and organization of information related to
women’s studies and how that information is made accessible to the
users who need it. The subheadings under professional issues relate
to librarianship and women’s studies librarianship and the practitioners
thereof.
Intellectual
Access
Indexing—Coverage
This section addresses
issues relating to the coverage of women’s studies information in
library resources.
| Databases |
| |
- How well
are women’s studies journals/topics covered in: general full-text
databases (Proquest, Ebscohost), discipline-based databases,
newspaper databases, and women’s studies databases?
|
| Web |
| |
- How well
do various popular search engines and directories cover women’s
studies information? Do feminist web sites ever get top-billing
by Google? How does the phenomenon of paying for page placement
affect the availability of feminist information to researchers?
|
| |
- What
special problems do the zines, e-zines, and weblogs so integral
to the current feminist movement present regarding both current
access and future access for scholars interested in this historical
period?
|
| Grey
literature |
| |
- How
well is the grey literature of women’s studies (conference
papers, NGO reports, newsletters, zines, international and
domestic government information, etc.) represented in indexing
and full-text resources? To what extent are non-US women’s
studies serials indexed?
|
| Multimedia |
| |
- To what
extent are visual, audio, and multimedia information sources
about women and gender readily accessible to scholars?
|
| Reference |
| |
- How well
are women’s studies topics covered in omnibus online reference
works like xreferplus and Oxford Reference Online?
|
Back
to outline
Indexing—Vocabulary
This section addresses
the use of language to identify women’s studies resources. This includes
both indexing terms and subject cataloging terms that determine a
resource’s physical placement in the library and online accessibility
via search terms in databases. The power of naming, or attributing
labels to works, is an especially critical one in women’s studies
because the works themselves frequently call into question the nature
of the knowledge hierarchy that traditional cataloging structures
reflect.
Hope Olson points
out three ways in which women’s studies challenges cataloging practice
:
1) Library of
Congress Subject Headings have developed in a sexist society;
2) women’s studies is an interdisciplinary field.
3) feminist research orientations do not fit into categories designed
for traditional research
Therefore, the
act of assigning appropriate labels to women’s studies materials is
often an act of knowledge creation and interpretation in itself.
Second, because
of the dynamic and interdisciplinary nature of women’s studies, Olson
argues that improving the flexibility of cataloging to encompass these
challenges will ultimately be beneficial for all knowledge classification
attempts in today’s “fundamentally unpredictable information environment.”
It is crucial to research how subject access is currently being handled
in online databases and how it can be improved, not just for the benefit
of women’s studies practitioners, but for all researchers.
Finally, the issue
of cataloging leads to very important theoretical questions that need
to be answered by women’s studies librarians.
- Should
materials of interest to women’s studies researchers be grouped
together physically, such as is currently the case in the
HQs, or should they be scattered throughout the collection
with the disciplinary books? Integration versus segregation
has very important ramifications for the transformation of
academic knowledge structures as well as access issues, and
this question stems from cataloging and indexing practice.
Again, studying how these issues are currently playing out
is a fundamental exercise for deciding how the future can
and should be shaped.
|
- What
do current taxonomies of gender-related concepts used in subject
cataloging and database indexing look like? Are they different
for every database? How and when is gender expressed in indexing/cataloging?
|
- |
How is gender expressed in subject indexing for children? |
-
|
Are indexing
terms evolving/emerging in key new areas of scholarly discourse?
How does that process happen?
|
Back
to outline
Users—Information-seeking behavior / Users—Information needs
analysis
This section addresses
the need for women’s studies librarians to understand how their users
are trying to access information and what information they need. The
interdisciplinary nature of women’s studies topics complicates both
of these aspects.
- When
seeking information on women and gender, what information
needs and information behaviors are commonly exhibited among
specific user groups: undergraduates, graduate students, faculty,
high school students, community activists, campus activists,
women’s studies librarians, women’s studies majors, etc.?
|
- What
is the role of the academic librarian in serving the personal
information needs of special user groups such as lesbians,
battered women, minority women, etc., both inside and outside
the university community?
|
- How are
women’s studies scholars using digital resources?
|
Back
to outline
Collection
Development and Evaluation
Women’s studies
as a field is interdisciplinary and can encompass both popular and
scholarly resources, as well as underground and alternative materials.
Collecting and preserving this wide variety of materials poses a challenge
to women’s studies librarians.
| Integration
of electronic resources |
| |
- To what
extent have women’s studies collection policies incorporated
e-resources, and how is access, both immediate and long-term,
being assured?
|
| |
- What
proportion of library budgets for women’s studies is being
spent on print vs. electronic materials? How has this changed
over time, and how does it compare to other disciplines?
|
| Interdisciplinary
overlap |
| |
- How is
the spending of women’s studies collection development budgets
coordinated with the spending of disciplinary budgets? What
are the advantages and disadvantages of duplication of print
material in library systems that have a separate women’s studies
library?
|
| Materials
outside the academic mainstream |
| |
- How widely/successfully
is grey literature, particularly zines, being incorporated
into academic libraries/ women’s studies collections?
|
| |
- To what
extent are academic libraries acquiring current popular, self-help,
and activist titles for women and/or men?
|
| |
- To what
extent are academic libraries acquiring third wave feminist
literature that is often more popular than academic in nature?
|
| Reference
materials |
| |
Is women-focused
reference publishing increasing, leveling off, or declining? |
Back
to outline
Women’s
Archives and Special Libraries
The libraries
for women’s resource centers and women-focused archives have a crucial
role to play in documenting and preserving records of women’s history
and activism. In many ways the digital revolution has both helped
and complicated this task.
| Advocacy |
| |
- To what
extent have women’s studies research centers and archives
been engaged with the community and advocacy and what effect
has this had on both the community and the archive?
|
| |
- What
is the relationship between collections in university or community
women’s centers and libraries collections?
|
| Digitization |
| |
- To what
extent are women’s archives and special collections engaged
in digitizing unique holdings? What funding, selection, and
workflow models have they adopted?
|
| Archiving
electronic materials |
| |
- What
is being done/could be done to archive women’s online activism
such as the League of Women Voters email Action Alert network?
What is being done to archive other online feminist and women’s
studies information (ezines, weblogs, etc.)?
|
Back
to outline
Serials—Online
Availability
The relationship
between women’s studies and the ongoing revolution in scholarly communication
needs to be analyzed for its effects on both women’s studies scholarship
and scholarly communication in general.
- Where
is women’s studies as a field in the transition from print
to electronic serials? Are there trends (in content, ideology,
design, etc.) in e-only women’s studies serials?
|
- Where
is women’s studies in the rush to merge and acquire between
vendors?
|
- Where
is women’s studies as a field in changing scholarly communication?
|
Back to
outline
Information literacy and women’s studies in higher education
The interdisciplinary nature of women’s studies and
the parallel between some feminist pedagogical objectives and information
literacy objectives make the intersection of information literacy
and women’s studies a provocative area for study.
- How can
feminist pedagogy inform information literacy instruction?
|
- How integrated
is the women’s studies librarian into the life of the women’s
studies department in terms of instruction?
|
- What
are current best practices for bibliographic instruction in
women’s studies?
|
- To what
extent are information literacy competencies integrated into
women’s studies curriculum?
|
Back to outline
Professional
Issues
Feminism
& Librarianship
The push for women’s
studies as a subfield of librarianship came directly from the feminist
activism of individual librarians. The relationship between feminism
and librarianship is just as important today and the two schools of
thought have much to offer each other.
| Library
vs. information science |
| |
- What
is the gendered impact of the transformation from library
science to information science? Do more males go into information
science and what would this mean for librarianship with regard
to the nature of the work, a possible gender division, and
concomitant salary disparity?
|
| Digital
Divide |
| |
- Is there
a digital divide by gender? What does it look like and what
can librarians do to counteract it?
|
| Librarian
activism |
| |
- What
is the relationship between theory and activism with regard
to feminism and the academic library?
|
| Generational
issues |
| |
- The first
generation of women’s studies librarians is starting to retire;
how do the pioneers and today’s practitioners differ? How
do younger generations of female librarians view feminism
and its relation to their work?
|
Back
to outline
Women’s
studies librarians as a professional subgroup
In the late 1970s,
with the establishment of separate departmental units devoted to women’s
studies within big academic libraries, the specialized subgroup of
women’s studies librarians came into existence. In 1983, a group of
women within ALA decided there was a need to discuss women’s studies
as a special focus of academic librarianship and began to organize
the Women’s Studies Section, which became official in 1988. Today,
the number of jobs that carry the sole title “women’s studies librarian”
are still relatively few, but nearly every institution has a librarian
whose job has this area of academic specialty subsumed under a broader
title. It is therefore pertinent to ask what sort of specialized training,
motivations, and career paths characterize these librarians in order
to study the future of the professional subgroup.
- What
background do people entering this specialization today generally
have? What training do they receive, what are their career
goals, how do they stay current with the discipline, and what
career paths do they take to get into women’s studies?
|
Back
to outline
Future
of the Profession
The future of
women’s studies librarianship will be tied to the evolution of women’s
studies as an academic field. As feminist and women-focused perspectives
become integrated into discipline-based studies, women’s studies librarians
can serve their information needs as well as those based in the interdisciplinary
field of women’s studies, but budget lines and cross-department collaboration
for collection development will need to be hammered out. To determine
what this future might look like, the following questions need to
be studied closely:
- What
is the current status and future outlook for stand-alone women’s
studies libraries in large academic institutions? How are
such libraries being used and by whom? What are the advantages
and disadvantages of having a separate women’s studies library
versus including the materials in the regular collection?
|
- How are
library collections and services growing/changing to accommodate
the phenomenal growth of women’s studies as a field of study
despite the current state of budget retrenchment in academic
libraries?
|
Back
to outline
|
