In 2020, the Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters (ACWS) collaborated with nine Community Service Learning (CSL) students from the University of Alberta to create a digital archive of items and collections representing ACWS’s 37-year history of advocacy work. This project was developed to complement a book being written by ACWS and an independent author aboutthe history of Alberta’s sheltering organizations. In the creation of this book, ACWS has assembled hundreds of records that required cataloging, metadata, and appropriate storage. These CSL students helped ACWS with the formation of a new digital library to preserve and display documentation highlighting ACWS’s 37-year history of supporting women’s shelters and working to end domestic violence.

The overarching goal of this project was to make this information widely accessible to the public, researchers and stakeholders as well as showcase the history of ACWS’s work.

Nine CSL students worked on this project. The students come from various academic backgrounds including: Undergraduate Women and Gender Studies Majors, Digital Humanities Master Students, Library and Information Studies Students and Gender and Social Justice Masters Students.

Using the Omeka S website, the students created an archive utilizing an intersectional framework, applying the Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable, Ethical and Revisable (FAIR[ER]) principles. Throughout the project, the group recognized that there were limitations to their work such as what information was included and what information was not included, the time allotted to the project, and the language used to organize information according to themes and tags. However, steps were taken to mitigate these issues such as using the FAIR[ER] principles as well as using academic and personal knowledge about intersectionality to inclusively and accurately represent different groups in this archive. The students worked closely with ACWS to develop a resource that suits their needs, as well as the needs of the general public. It is the team’s hope that this resource will continue to grow and be edited in the future to become even FAIR[ER].

Methodology

Due to the nature of this archive, the group used an Agile approach to both plan and complete this project. The Agile approach allowed the group to stay open minded, to collaborate with ACWS and to work iteratively and responsively — rather than linearly — throughout the project. The project began with the general goal of creating an accessible digital archive that met ACWS’s needs. Throughout the project, the team took direction from their instructor Dr. Verhoeven, ACWS, as well as each other. The team also developed and adhered to group values and principles in order to facilitate a positive learning environment for all team members, while dividing work equitably.

Above all else, the team worked towards intersectionality throughout the project, ensuring that data was properly represented and that all people and groups were respected in the archive. This meant recognizing the complex and intersecting political, social and economic contexts and identities that are supported and impacted by ACWS and the work that they do. Ultimately, the project aimed to deconstruct, rather than re-create, structures of oppression.

Finally, the group worked together to update metadata, and utilized information from the documents provided by ACWS to develop relevant and inclusive themes and tags that would allow for the easy categorization and navigation of the ACWS Omeka website.

Values, Principles and Standards

To ensure that this project best met ACWS’s needs and the group's expectations, the group created values and collecting principles at the beginning of the project in order to guide their process and adhere to their collective standards. The group values were: generosity and kindness, creativity and open mindedness, maintaining clear and open feedback/communication, commitment and perseverance, sustainability and transparency, and finally teamwork and collaboration. The team’s collective principles were: ensuring accessibility and findability, sustainability, transparency and acknowledgement of context/biases, respectful stewardship, social justice focus, and usability and practicality. And the standards the group agreed to were: making sure that the data followed the FAIR(ER) principles, that confidentiality was maintained, creating consistency using Dublin core, utilizing thoughtful language, intersectionality and working towards decolonization.