The Bodleian is one of the 6 legal deposit libraries in the UK. One of my projects this year as a graduate trainee digital archivist on the Bodleian Libraries’ Developing the Next Generation Archivist programme is to help curate special collections in the UK Web Archive. Since May I’ve been working on the Gender Equality collection. Please note, this post also appears on the British Library UK Web Archive blog.
Why are we collecting?
2018 is the centenary of the 1918 Representation of the People’s Act. UK-wide memorials and celebrations of this journey, and victory of women’s suffrage, are all evident online: from events, exhibitions, commemorations and campaigns. Popular topics being discussed at the moment include the hashtags #timesup and #metoo, gender pay disparity and the recent referendum on the 8th Amendment in the Republic of Ireland. These discussions produce a lot of ephemeral material, and without web archiving this material is at risk of moving or even disappearing. As we can see gender equality is being discussed a lot currently in the media, these discussions have been developing over years.
Through the UK Web Archive SHINE interface we can see that matching text for the phrase ‘gender equality’ increased from a result of 0.002% (24 out of 843,204) of crawled resources in 1996, to 0.044% (23,289 out of 53,146,359) in 2013.
SHINE user interface
If we search UK web content relating to gender equality we will generate so many results; for example, organisations have published their gender pay discrepancy reports online and there is much to engage with from social media accounts of both individuals and organisations relating to campaigning for gender equality. It becomes apparent that when we browse this web content gender equality means something different for so many presences online: charities, societies, employers, authorities, heritage centres and individuals such as social entrepreneurs, teachers, researchers and more.
The Fawcett Society: https://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/blog/why-does-teaching-votes-for-women-matter-an-a-level-teachers-perspective
What we are collecting?
The Gender Equality special collection, that is now live on the UK Web Archive comprises material which provides a snapshot into attitudes towards gender equality in the UK. Web material is harvested under the areas of:
- Bodily autonomy
- Domestic abuse/Gender based violence
- Gender equality in the workplace
- Gender identity
- Parenting
- The gender pay gap
- Women’s suffrage
100 years on from women’s suffrage the fight for gender equality continues. The collection is still undergoing curation and growing in archival records – and you can help too!
How to get involved?
If there are any UK websites that you think should be added to the Gender Equality collection then you can take up the UK Web Archive’s call for action and nominate.