About the Repository

Mission Statement 

We curate the digitized archives of the Women’s Research Centre to benefit students, researchers, other academic personnel and the general public. This database supports research, increases the appreciation of feminist themes in a local and global context and also carefully considers the ethical implications of the arrangement of the data, the sensitivity of the individuals, events and organizations represented, in order to create an accessible and equitable resource. 

In 2020, a team made up of the students enrolled in the Summer 2020 WGS 498, GSJ 598 and DH 530  course (Topics in Women’s and Gender Studies; Gender and Social Justice Studies, And Topics in Building in Context, respectively) began this process by curating records from the committees of women's research. In Summer 2021, these records were categorized and uploaded to this Omeka site by students enrolled in the same course(s): Phil Nelson, Caroline Winter, Abirami Muthukumar Jody Bergerman and Bree Meiklejohn in collaboration with Karen Langley, the manager of institutional records at Athabasca University. 

 

Vision

We endeavour to be a long-lasting and invaluable resource to the community and our partner organization, the Thomas A. Edge Archives & Special Collections at Athabasca University through:

In 2021, we hope to carry on from last year's group by: 

 

Values

Our collection values are condensed into four points which create the acronym S.A.F.E: Sustainability, Accountability, Functionality, and Ethics. 

The 2021 team aims to continue with these ideals, as well as embody the F.A.I.R principles (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability) outlines by Wilkinson et al. (2016). We will achieve this through consistent application of the Dublin Core metadata profile established by our community partner and, when possible, by including linked data. We plan to implement these ideals through the following strategies:

Sustainability

We have created a collection that can be adapted by the various members of our team, and very specifically our Community Service Learning (CSL) partner. To ensure that this database is usable and adaptable after the course, we document our methodologies and the reasons for our choosing of themes, tags, and the structure of the site. This will allow the database to grow continuously and be of value to the organization, students and the general population.

Accountability

As data stewards we acknowledge the rightful owner of each source in the collection and curate items in a way that tell an equitable story. This is done by sourcing and including relevant and concise material that represents diversity through social and institutional categorizations such as wealth, class, linguistic ability, sexuality, gender, race, ability and other potential (dis)parities. Where this is not evident in the files, it is acknowledged to reveal certain biases of the time period(s) and, or organizations.

Further, while we did not explicitly encounter this in our work in the summer of 2021, we acknowledge that the material itself may contain dated terminology.  When this is the case, in creating metadata and themed collections, when we are describing the people represented by the items we will strive to use person-first language and terminology (National Disability Authority, 2014).

As the 2021 team, we acknowledge that as temporary stewards of this repository's data, we are accountable to those whom the data is about as well as its creators. We echo the previous team's value of telling an equitable story, and therefore resolve to manage and arrange the data in a way that is inclusive of diverse perspectives, identities, positionalities, and ways of knowing.  We will also strive to honour the intersectionality present in the collection in our arrangement of it. Finally, we acknowledge our accountability to the previous team who began this project and future teams who will carry on the work, as well as researchers who will access the data. In light of this, we approach our work by keeping the user's needs in mind, and resolve to provide documentation that will be of service to future stewards of this collection.

Functionality

The 2020 team endeavoured to create a database that is usable by the public and manageable by our CSL partner. By creating themes that represent the major moments of the organization's history, we educate our viewers on significant topics. Additionally, our large range of tags will allow users to research specific individuals, time periods, events, languages, and record types.

The 2021 team builds on these functionalities, adding a focus on interface usability and accessibility. Keeping users' needs in mind, we ask how we can maximize the functionality of the collection through the site's design. As users have varying abilities, we will strive to reduce as many barriers to usability and functionality as possible through the site's design and organization. In addition, we approach the idea of functionality through the value of curiosity, being willing to experiment, embrace new ways of doing things, and learn through experience.

Ethics

It is of vital importance that we create a digital database that supports positive transition discourses for the future. Through consulting experts and other relevant sources of information, knowledge inaccuracies are limited and removed in order to accurately represent local and cultural knowledge systems that may or may not be familiar to our stewards. The significance of the material is upheld, as we maintain a consistent sensitivity of the work we are doing. As data stewards and not misers, this collection ultimately belongs to our community. In recognition of this, we strive to eliminate personal biases so we can work justly, creatively, collaboratively, and perseveringly to create a database that is a valuable resource to all members of society including our stakeholders.

Building on these ethical commitments, the 2021 team adds a commitment to integrity. This includes the kind of data integrity described by the previous team as well as academic integrity in the form of acknowledging the collective labour involved in creating this collection. To do this, we will credit the work of the previous team, our collaborators at the University of Athabasca, the creators of the archival materials, and our own team. Recognizing citation practices as a form of academic integrity, we will engage in scholarly conversations with integrity and make citation information about the site available to other researchers. 

 

References:

Wilkinson, M. et al. (2016). The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship. Scientific Data, 3. https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201618 

2014. "Appropriate Terms to Use about Disability." National Disability Authority. http://nda.ie/Publications/Attitudes/Appropriate-Terms-to-Use-about-Disability/

 

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