GSJ 598/ DH 530 - YWC

Students:

Course: GSJ 598 and DH 530 Building Intersectionally Informed Feminist Archives with instructor: Dr. Deb Verhoeven (Summer 2023)

Elizabeth

Lori

Who was your community partner, and can you describe the project objectives?

Community Partner - YWCA Edmonton. The project involved building an online archive site using digitized items from the YWCA Edmonton's archives and Omeka software:

What was the biggest takeaway from your CSL placement?

Working with the YWCA allowed me to apply the technical skills I was learning to benefit an organization whose core goals and principles deeply resonated with me. Working with digitized items from the YWCA archives challenged me to contextualize the items for a modern audience effectively.

How can you apply any newly gained knowledge/skills to your future endeavors (courses/employment/volunteering)?

Data skills are always in demand, but this course goes deeper than just learning the nuts and bolts of archiving. We examined our projects with an intersectional lens and were encouraged to think deeply about the impacts of our choices. What we left in or left out and how we chose to describe and catalogue archival items were exercises of power. We were choosing what to make visible from the digitized items and the context and labels we gave them.