ida - umbrella association of German-speaking women / lesbian archives, libraries and documentation centers

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Umbrella organization ida - inform, document, archive. Umbrella association of German-speaking lesbian and women's archives and libraries
(ida umbrella association)
logo
legal form registered association
founding 1994
Seat Bonn
Office kassel
purpose Networking and support of archives and libraries in the field of women and lesbian research and documentation
Chair Susanne Knoblich,
Margit Hauser,
Sabine Balke
Website www.ida-dachverband.de

ida - umbrella association of German-speaking women / lesbian archives, libraries and documentation centers (official name according to the statutes: umbrella association ida - inform, document, archive. Umbrella association of German-speaking lesbian / women's archives and libraries ) is an association founded in 1994 with headquarters in Bonn. It contains lesbian and women archives, libraries and documentation centers from Germany, Austria and Luxembourg. Italy and Switzerland organized.

The tasks and goals of the umbrella organization include networking interested and committed women and institutions, regular professional and personal exchange, further qualification, supraregional public relations, political and financial support for financially unsecured women's libraries and archives and the public visibility of women's archive work.

The current office of the association is in Kassel, in the premises of the archive of the German women's movement .

Historical context

Old logo of the association (2006)

In the course of the first wave of the women's movement , a large number of socially pragmatic and politically motivated women's associations and educational institutions emerged in the mid-19th century . The goals of women's political organizations included universal suffrage, the right to education and a job for women. Some of these more or less political associations were the Allgemeine Deutsche Frauenverein (ADF) (later German Citizens Association) (1865), the Pestalozzi-Froebel-Haus (1873/74), the Lette-Verein (1866), the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine with the Helene Lange Archive (1894), the interdenominational social women's school , founded by Alice Salomon (1908).

In 1895, Maria Lischnewska wrote in the newspaper Die Frauenbewegung, published by Minna Cauer :

“We need a library for the women’s question and the capital of the Reich should create one. I think of this library as a collecting point for everything that Germany and abroad have produced and are still producing in the field of women’s question. [...] The library would do a great service to contemporary women's affairs. It would enable us to judge more confidently and to move forward more consistently. "

In this context, the women's associations began to found the first women's libraries and archives and to collect all kinds of text and image material for professional training and further education for women, for women's (right) movement and for documenting their own association history. The associations served as the bearer of the women's libraries and archives and the work was and is often done on a voluntary basis. As early as 1910, one in ten of the approximately 4,000 local associations of the Federation of German Women's Associations had their own library.

In the course of the seizure of power and DC circuit by the Nazis , many women's organizations disbanded voluntarily. Only a small part of the holdings could be saved from the Nazis and the destruction in the Second World War through often private initiatives. Two of these quite extensive holdings are the Helene Lange Archive and the archive of the German Citizens Association.

In 1968 and in the following years the second wave of the women's movement began in the Federal Republic of Germany with the general social upheaval and change in values . Many of the feminist actions of this time were not considered archivable in the established institutions. Accordingly, autonomous women and lesbian groups successfully took care of the collection and archiving of these contemporary documents, as the previous search for relevant literature turned out to be a laborious act. According to Dagmar Jank , the reasons for this are:

  1. in the absence of books and archives by and about women,
  2. in imperfect library systematics or subject catalogs and, in relation to the archive area, in incomplete finding aids ,
  3. in the opening times, which are unfavorable for women

For example, the Lesbian Action Center kept the first documents of the movement in standing files.

As a result of or inspired by the autonomous women's movement, women's political work that is anchored in academia and institutions was increasingly organized. In the mid-1970s, women academics began to join forces in research groups and projects in order to scientifically substantiate the discrimination of women with the aim of achieving political, social and economic equality between men and women. In addition to women's research , the idea of ​​documenting women-specific literature and central and decentralized information and documentation centers was also discussed here.

In October 1976 over 500 women met at the “West Berlin Women's Summer University” and, following the events up to now, demanded “the establishment of a women's archive and library”. In 1977 Antje Finger founded the Kassandra Archive for the Feminist Arts in Berlin. The archive group of the Lesbian Action Center (LAZ) integrated itself in 1978 into the newly founded women's research, education and information center (FFBIZ). The indulgence formed "an initial assessment of the successes and defeats of feminist interference in, influencing and changing universities, adult education centers, various archives, libraries and documentation centers."

Archive and library start-ups

Numerous archives and libraries were founded in many other cities. In the German-speaking area there are now more than 70 institutionally anchored and autonomous institutions with different collections on all issues relating to women and lesbians. A large number of archives and libraries were also founded in the new federal states. Almost all of the work on historical women's research in the GDR was written and kept at the Leipzig University of Education. The Democratic Women's Federation of Germany (DFD) also has its own archive in Berlin.

The new thing about these libraries and archives was:

  1. the self-determination of the work content and thus the inventory structure,
  2. the dismantling of hierarchical work structures,
  3. the removal of the separation of organizational and content-related work,
  4. avoidance of a service or consumer relationship between the project women and the users,
  5. a different relationship to the collected material (after Dagmar Jank).

In 1990, the autonomous women's institutions also merged to form their own umbrella organization, the Federal Working Group of Autonomous Women's Research Institutions (BAFF).

Today every country in Western Europe (with the exception of Ireland) has at least one documentation center on the past and present of women.

Meetings of archive and library representatives

Since 1983, archives and library representatives have held regular biannual meetings in the women's archives and libraries working group in order to exchange technical information and promote networking between the individual institutions. An important point here were the new methods of feminist archiving. The tools with which women-specific materials can be developed had to be redesigned. The new terminology of the women's and lesbian movement required new descriptors, catchphrases and systems. From this, for example, the FrauenMediaTurm in Cologne developed the first feminist thesaurus in German (1994). The umbrella association of German-speaking women / lesbian archives, libraries and documentation centers - idae V. emerged from the archive meeting in Bremen in 1994 . Since 2003 the working meetings have only taken place once a year.

Objectives

The goals of the association are implemented through various offers and measures:

1. Public Relations

  • Support and promotion of the website for archiving women's association files www.FrauVerA.de
  • common homepage

2. Networking and professional exchange

  • annual working meetings

3. Make feminist magazines visible in the magazine database

Self-image and tasks of the association and its affiliated libraries / archives

Women's libraries and archives were and still are a very important alternative to conventional educational work in the context of feminist, self-organized educational work and are therefore of particular importance. Conventional library and archive collections contained only a few and unsystematized women-specific information. Deviating from this, books are acquired in women's libraries and archives from a women-specific point of view, gray literature (papers, theses, diploma and master's theses) are collected, newspaper and magazine articles, bequests, autographs, posters, audio-visual materials, music, photos, buttons and other objects evaluated, cataloged and made available for use.

Women's libraries, archives and documentation centers see themselves as memory and living centers of the women's and lesbian movements. They not only collect documents on all women-specific topics, but also offer women undisturbed spaces for their interests, and demand and promote the discussion and communication of experiences and insights from the international feminist movements. The central point is the transfer of feminist-academic debates into the various political fields and everyday use.

Most facilities cater to all women, e.g. Sometimes also men, a versatile service. This includes, for example, individual archive advice at fixed opening times, literature research in own and third-party databases, online library research, interlibrary loan, ordering copies, archive databases, expert databases, etc. v. m.

They also see themselves as part of the women's movement and are part of the women's infrastructure in municipalities, federal states and regions and try to promote cooperation and networking between women and lesbians in this way. Above all, they also support the political struggles of women on site and in all parts of the world.

The individual libraries and archives differ on the one hand in their regional collection focus and on the other hand in their thematic specializations and special collections.

Collection focus: Regional women's (movement) history

  • international
  • EU
  • Luxembourg and Saar-Lor-Lux
  • Switzerland
  • Austria
  • Federal Republic of Germany - nationwide
  • individual federal states
  • GDR
  • different cities

Further focus areas and specializations

  • Abortion / Self-determination
  • job
  • Development policy
  • Feminist Theory and Gender Studies
  • Women's movements until 1968
  • Gene and Reproductive Technologies
  • Health, violence, women's rights / human rights
  • International women's movement
  • Art and culture
  • Lesbian and lesbian movement
  • Girls' literature
  • New women's movement
  • Nazi era
  • racism
  • Transgenderism
  • Music / composers

Special archive holdings

  • Image archives
  • Music collections
  • Poster collections
  • Video archives
  • Magazines
  • Newspaper clipping collections

Facilities

The following are currently organized in the umbrella organization:

Germany

Austria

Switzerland

Luxembourg

Italy

Netherlands

literature

  • Ariadne - Almanac of the Archives of the German Women's Movement 34/1998.

Other sources

  • Aleksander, Karin: Report on the 37th meeting of the German-speaking women's information organizations (ida / working meeting) from 25.-27. October 2002 in Saarbrücken. In: ZtG (Ed.): Bulletin Info 26/2003, pp. 59–61.
  • Jank, Dagmar: Women's Archives and Women's Libraries in Germany. In: Deutscher Bibliothekartag 1/1991, pp. 199–210.
  • Jank, Dagmar: Frauenthesauri in the information and documentation area. In: Library Service 11/1996, pp. 1913–1921.
  • Keinhorst, Annette: women's libraries and archives . Don't forget to think about yourself. In: Buch und Bibliothek 9/1994, pp. 776–779.
  • Latz, Birgit: Women's Archives. Basics and possible uses. Amsterdam, Edition ID archive in the IISG, 1989.
  • Lüdtke, Helga (ed.): Passion and education. On the history of women's work in libraries. Orlanda, Berlin 1992.
  • Maierhof, Gudrun: In search of the “hidden” story. In: Archive of the German women's movement (ed.): 10 years archive of the German women's movement. Kassel 1994.
  • www.FrauVerA.de. Website for archiving women's association files. In: ZtG (Ed.): Bulletin Info 33/2006, pp. 21–22.
  • Schatzberg, Karin (ed.): Women's archives and women's libraries. History of origin, organizational and content-related focus. Edition Herodotus published by Radar-Verlag, Aachen 1986.
  • Schuler, Martina: Women's Archives and Women's Libraries. Concepts and their implementation using selected examples. In: Bibliothek 3/1996, pp. 348-364.
  • Alice Schwarzer: A tower for women alone . On the opening of the women's media tower in Cologne, 1994.
  • ida - umbrella association of German-speaking women / lesbian archives, libraries and documentation centers , accessed on October 20, 2006.
  • Archive of the German Women's Movement , accessed on October 20, 2006.
  • FrauenMediaTurm Cologne , accessed on October 20, 2006.
  • FFBIZ. , accessed October 20, 2006.
  • Karin Aleksander: “You will only find very incomplete material here.” Which gaps do women's libraries fill? (PDF; 1.1 MB) .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bonn Local Court, VR 689.
  2. ^ Archive of the German Women's Movement ( Memento from September 3, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ http://www.ffbiz.de/
  4. ↑ From a self-presentation brochure from the FFBIZ
  5. ↑ http://www.frauvera.de/
  6. ↑ ida-dachverband.de: facilities . Retrieved on May 21, 2011. ( Memento of May 27, 2012 in the Internet Archive )