As an interdisciplinary branch of research, women's and gender studies have permeated the fields of art and science. In Architecture and Urban Planning, as well as in cultural studies, media studies and engineering sciences, the analytical category of »gender« is also becoming increasingly important and becoming intertwined with other social order systems­. For example, gender issues play an important role in planning, using or appropriating spaces, buildings or media. The text below is meant to introduce four women’s and gender studies online databases to members of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar to help conduct in-depth research on these Topics.

Gender: Identity and Social Change

TheGender: Identity and Social Change online database is a comprehensive collection of primary sources on the history of women's rights movements in English-speaking countries from the 19th century to the present. The data collection is based on the individual stocks from the nine participating libraries from Great Britain, Canada, Australia and the USA. In addition to digitised texts such as newspaper articles, pamphlets, speech manuscripts, notebooks, letters and diary entries, it also includes visual media such as photos, illustrations and posters, as well as digitalised copies of other objects. The platform also provides short biographies and portraits of individuals and organisations important to the women's rights movements as well as scientific essays. In addition to keyword searches, the database also allows research of primary sources on selected topics (e.g. women's suffrage, men's movement, gender and sexuality, domesticity and family, government and politics, education and upbringing, and much more). In this way, researchers can trace the historical developments of gender roles and relationships in the English-speaking world as well as the biographies of individual pioneers (and antagonists) of the many feminist movements.

With the financial support of theDeutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft(DFG), the Fachinformationsdienst (FID) Anglo-American Culture is able to offer access to the Gender: Identity and Social Change database. Individuals who do not have access to a university network or scientific library can register  for free access via the DFG-funded National Licence, provided they are registered with permanent residence in the Federal Republic of Germany (the login for registered individual users* can be found here). Since 2017, students of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar have also been able to access the database via the university network. Dr. Katrin Richter, the subject specialist for media and cultural studies, philosophy and sociology at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, is happy to assist with any questions regarding its use.

META Catalogue and Digital German Women's Archive (DDF)

With the META Catalogue and theDigitalen Deutschen Frauenarchiv (DDF), researchers and the general public ­­­­­­have access to two unique online portals for researching and exploring the German history of the lesbian and women's movement.

The META catalogue went online in 2015 under the umbrella organisation inform – document – archive (i.d.a.). Since 1994, the organisation has been networking with around 40 lesbian and women's archives, libraries and documentation centres from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Italy. The freely accessible META Catalogue provides interested members of the public with an overview of the collected portfolios from the networked organisations in a single database. In addition to various publications, films and recordings, the catalogue also allows research on activist artifacts such as leaflets, posters, banners, buttons and T-shirts. In addition to short descriptions and provenance data of the texts and objects collected, the META Catalogue also provides information and contact details for the archives, libraries and documentation centres that manage the texts and objects. This means that in addition to the origin and whereabouts of the writings and artifacts, organisations and experts who can provide more detailed information can also be contacted.

The data set of the META Catalogue is also the basis for the Digitale Deutsche Frauenarchiv (DDF), established in 2018. While the META Catalogue is primarily collective evidence and joint catalogue of the i.d.a., the DDF also provides the opportunity to examine selected testimonies to the history of the lesbian and women's movement in digitalised form – including treasures from the estates of feminist pioneers. The online portal also offers blog entries and scientific information on various topics and participants in the lesbian and women's movement. Some examples include biographies, network relationships and publication lists of individual pioneers from nearly 200 years of feminist emancipation history.

While online research in the META Catalogue and in the DDF is in principle open to anyone interested, these two online portals can make the searchable texts and artefacts freely available on the Internet as digital copies only in exceptional cases due to copyright restrictions. The situation is different for the Open Gender Platform that was designed according to the Open Access principle.

Open Gender Platform

The Open Gender Platform developed as part of an open access project at the Margherita von Brentano Centre for Gender Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin and has been online since September 2019. The main goal of the project is to make scientific findings and developments in the field of interdisciplinary women's and gender studies freely accessible and usable for all people. In addition, the platform aims to network and make existing Open Access initiatives in feminist research visible. For this purpose, the Open Gender Platform provides links to scientific open access journals, publication series, freely accessible archives, glossaries, knowledge portals and science blogs. To promote and support the further transformation to Open Access in gender studies in German, the platform also provides an expert database where scientific editors find qualified persons who have voluntarily made themselves available for peer reviewing Open Access journals and monographs.

As this overview of online databases shows, the institutionalisation and networking of interdisciplinary women's and gender studies is steadily advancing. Over the course of this development, researchers have more and more instruments at their disposal for producing and transferring knowledge. Members of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar who want to reflect on women's and gender issues, or simply embark on a historical journey of discovery are recommended to visit the links below.

Links:

Gender: Identity and Social Change:
http://www.genderidentityandsocialchange.amdigital.co.uk

META Catalogue:
https://meta-katalog.eu/

Digital German Women's Archive (DDF):
https://www.digitales-deutsches-frauenarchiv.de

Open Gender Platform:
https://opengenderplatform.de/

Help and support:

Dr. Katrin Richter

Bauhaus-Universität
Weimar University Library
Department of Media and Cultural Studies, Philosophy, Sociology
Steubenstrasse 6, Room 1.03
99423 Weimar

Phone: 03643 / 58 28 03
E-mail: katrin.richter[at]uni-weimar.de

Further reading:

Lehnert, Katrin & Zierold, Marius (2020). Feminist pearl diving: the META Catalogue and the Digital German Women's Archive make materials from the women's movements visible to the general public. Bib – The Open Library Journal, 7(2). [DOI: https://doi.org/10.5282/o-bib/5576]

Ganz, Kathrin & Wrzesinski, Marcel (2018). Open Gender Platform: support for Open Access in Gender Studies Bulletin Info / Centre for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies / Humboldt University Berlin, 57, 13-16 [DOI: https://doi.org/10.25595/570]