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WOMEN AND LIBRARIANSHIP
No. 10
May/June 1997
Chair:
Mary Biblo,
University of Chicago
Laboratory Schools, 1362 East 59th Str.,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Fax +1 773 702 7455
Tel +1 773 702 0583
Email mbiblo@vertex.ucls.uchicago.edu
Secretary-Treasurer:
Leena Siitonen,
c/o H. Uuttu, Piispalantie 14,
21420 Lieto, Finland
Fax +358 2 489 4849
Tel +358 2 487 7328
Email leesii@utu.fi
Greetings
As the summer approaches the program for the Copenhagen, IFLA's conference is set. The officers have worked diligently to attract papers and speakers that will be of interest to all of us.
The theme of the program encompasses 'Libraries and Information for Human Development' with our sub-theme 'Women Advancing for Future through Life-long Learning.'
Many persons have volunteered to serve on the Executive Committee. Some will serve as corresponding members so that we will have input from a broad spectrum of views for those of you who will be able to come to Copenhagen. I look forward to seeing you.
Let us work toward becoming a strong, viable force in the international women's movement.
31 August - 5 September 1997, Copenhagen, Denmark
RTWI Meetings
- RTWI Executive Committee (No. 51)
- Saturday, 30 August, 15:00 - 17:20
- RTWI Executive Committee II
- (see IFLA Express )
- RTWI Program (No. 114)
- Tuesday, 2 September, 15:30 - 18:00
- Visit at KVINFO's new library
- (see IFLA Express)
Date and time of the library visit will be announced by conference time, when KVINFO, the Danish Centre for Information on Women and Gender Studies will be in its new location near the Kongelige Bibliotek, at the waterfront. For more information on KVINFO, see Women, Information and Future, Proceedings of the conference sponsored by the Schlesinger Library, June 1994 (Highsmith Press, c 1995: 97-100).
Program No. 114
Tuesday, 2 September, 15:30 - 18:00
Women Advancing for the Future through Life-long Learning
Speakers and Topics:
- Kalpana Dasgupta, Director, Central Secretariat Library, Ministry of Human Resource Development, New Delhi, India:
"Women as Managers of Libraries: A Developmental Process in India."
- Claudia J. Gollop, Assistant Professor, School of Library and Information Science, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA:
"Women and Consumer Health Information."
- Zhang Lixin, Foreign Languages Department, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China:
"Women's Issues in Contemporary Chinese Society: The Impact of Economic Reform on Female Librarians."
- Anne Goulding and Marigold Cleeve, Department of Information and Library Studies, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK:
"Gender and Equity in the LIS Curriculum: Building Confidence for the Future."
Welcome to participate with your colleagues!
Mary Biblo
From 10 - 14 March 1997 the African Gender Institute hosted a pan-African workshop for librarians and documentalists. The workshop was held to explore communicative mechanisms to share gender information in Africa.
In November 1996, a pan-African working group was established to select participants, draw up an agenda and assist in the process of the workshop. All the pre-planning was done via electronic mail -- a testimony to the possibilities of internet connectivity and communication in Africa.
- Twenty participants gathered in Cape Town for the workshop, and the aims were to explore:
- Regional challenges to collecting and sharing information on gender;
- Types and content of gender information and where it is located on the continent;
- Effective channels of communication;
- Ways of resource sharing, partnership and non-duplication;
- Review previous initiatives;
- Establish critical areas of concern.
After a week of hard work the workshop dec ided that we needed to establish a network to address four critical areas of concern. Participants divided into four groups to take the following tasks forward.
- Explore the types and content of gender collections and where they are located on the continent;
- Establish effective channels of communication;
- Explore ways of resource sharing, partnerships and non-duplication of resources amongst organisations;
- Establish critical areas of concern which the network could address.
The Working Groups, who are each responsible for one of the above tasks, are taking the network forward in the following ways:
Acting as the hub of activity to coordinate the network;
- Establishing a listserv;
- Developing a funding strategy;
- Deciding on a name for the network.
If anyone would like further information on the network or would like to receive the workshop proceedings, please contact
Jennifer Radloff,
African Gender Institute,
University of Cape Town,
Private Bag Rondebosch, 7700,
South Africa
tel. +27 21 650 2970,
fax +27 21 685 2142
email jradloff@agi.utc.ac.za
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Women's Studies/Women in International Development Library has a homepage on Internet that describes the collection briefly and lists selected resources held. It also has links to other websites. Your suggestions or comments are welcome. Visit the URL at http://tortie.me.uiuc.edu/ws-lib.html or http://www.grainger.uiuc.edu, then look under Library Locations, then under Area Studies, then Women's Studies.
Women's Studies (WS) started as a multi-disciplinary academic field in the early 1970s. The first known course was taught in the U.S. in 1969. Today there are WS research and teaching entities in scores of countries on six continents, with over 500 WS programs in the U.S. alone.
Women in International Development (WID) emerged as a field in the late 1970s out of concern over a general failure on the part of international economic assistance agencies to include gender considerations in their planning. That is, they did not recognize the true value of women's roles and contributions to economic life in developing areas of the world.
WS and WID combine scholarship with active concern over survival issues of women's everyday lives. These fields have influenced the theory, content and practice of nearly all traditional disciplines, including the life and pure sciences. It can be said that they have literally changed people's lives.
Beth Stafford-Vaughan,
Women's Studies/WID Librarian
University of Illinois Library
* Beth S-V also suggests us WomensNet, a service that is exceptionally helpful for reaching activists and grassroots women's organizations. For information contact: Institute for Global Communications, outreach@igc.org or http://www.igc.org/
UN Press Release
(New York, March 6, 1997) UN women's institutions jointly launch WomenWatch, an Internet Gateway on the Advancement and Empowerment of Women.
The three entities in the UN system specifically devoted to women's issues -- the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), and the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW) -- have pooled efforts and resources to create WomenWatch, a joint space on the Internet on the advancmenet and empowerment of women, which will be launched on International Women's Day, March 8, 1997.
WomenWatch is a gateway to UN information and data on women worldwide and an evolving electronic forum on global women's issues in the follow-up to the Fourth World Conference on Women (FWCW). The Internet site provides up-to-date information on the UN's work on behalf of the women of the world and on the global agenda for improving the status of women. It is designed to serve as an important contribution to the outreach programmes of its collaborating partners, providing a cost-effective means to expand outreach and networking and streamlining access to information.
The Internet-site will be accesible through the World Wide Web at http://www.un.org/womenwatch, as well as through other Internet tools such as the electronic mail womenwatch@un.org and the gopher gopher.un.org. The information will be organized in an Internet-accessible database to allow users in developing countries who do not have direct access to all Internet tools to retrieve the information. Efforts will also be made to repackage and redisseminate information to locations with no Internet access. Closer cooperation will be fostered with organizations that provide training in the use of electronic communication technologies.
The new Web sites of UNIFEM (http://www.unifem.undp.org) and INSTRAW (http://www.un.org/instraw), as well as the site of the Division for the Advancement of Women (http://www.un.org/dpcsd/daw) will be linked through WomenWatch. For more information contact:
DAW,
Oliva Acosta,
+1 202 963 0272,
E-mail: acosta@un.org
UNIFEM,
Melanie Roth,
+1 212 906 6897,
E-mail: melanie.roth@undp.org
INSTRAW,
Julia Tavares,
+1 809 685 2111,
E-mail: instraw.hq.sd@codetel.net.do
Leena Siitonen's suggested reading: Internet Resources on Women, by Joan Korenman; see http://www.umbc.edu/wmst/toc.html.
Wendy Bartlett's suggested reading: "Still not Equal: Closing the Library Gender Gap," by Suzanne Hildenbrand (Library Journal, March 1, 1997: 44-46).
For the Newsletter subscription/change of address, etc, send your name, address, job type, fax and telephone numbers and email address to:
Wendy Bartlettt,
Head, Reader Services Unit,
Vienna International Centre Library,
International Atomic Energy Agency,
Wagrame Strasse 5,
P.O. Box 100,
A-1400 Vienna,
Austria,
fax +43 1 2060 295 84,
email bartlett@nepo1.iaea.or.at
Please do not forget to type or print clearly. This is very important to secure the mailing.
Women and Librarianship, the Newsletter of the IFLA Round Table on Women's Issues -- RTWI, is published biannually. Send articles and news items to Editor,
Yoko Taguchi,
Kyoto Seika University,
137 Kino,
Iwakura, Sakyo,
Kyoto 606,
Japan,
fax +81 75 722 0838,
email yktag49@mbox.kyoto-inet.or.jp
The aim and purpose of the Round Table on Women's Issues of IFLA is:
- To represent the diversity of women's interests in IFLA
- To insure that IFLA consider the rights of women in the library and information field
- To initiate and promote the collection, analysis, dissemination and coordination of information on the status of women in librarianship
- To consider questions that have special relevance for women
- To identify possible discrimination and sisparities in information resources and programs relating to women
- To develop programs to enhance the opportunities and the image of women in the library profession
- To raise the level of consciousness concerning women in the profession
- To promote education for women in the library profession
- To support the aspirations of women of color within the profession
- To establish relationships with women's groups within library associations and other professional groups, and
- To provide the IFLA Executive Board and the membership with the reports needed for the establishment of policies and actions related to the status of women in the profession.
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