Women's Studies Collection Development at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Definition of Women’s Studies and Relationship to Collection Development
Women’s Studies is the field that examines women’s experiences and gender
roles as they affect the lives of women and men, human culture, and the course
of history. The scholarship of women’s studies occurs within disciplines, across
multiple disciplines, and in interdisciplinary ways. Most women’s studies, or
gender-focused scholarship is informed by a feminist perspective. Though works
were written about women and gender in earlier periods, systematic analysis
arrived with the founding of the field of Women’s Studies in the late 1960s and
early 1970s and its subsequent growth thereafter, encompassing "Second Wave" and "Third Wave" material and those that take issue with "Waves" as a construct. Attention to girls is also an interest to women's studies, particularly works consciously produced as part of "Girls Studies." Cultural studies,
post-colonial studies, queer theory, and the influence of popular culture all
inform women’s studies scholarship in the early twenty-first century.
Though they have different meanings, the terms “women’s studies,” “feminist,”
and “gendered,” all describe the field for the purposes of library collection
development. Because there is a Women’s Studies/feminist/gendered aspect to
essentially all disciplines, Women’s Studies collection development at
UW-Madison is a responsibility shared in part by all selectors. This collection
development policy statement focuses on the specific responsibilities of the
Women’s Studies librarian but makes reference to related libraries and
selectors.
Campus Women’s Studies Program and Gender-Focused Scholarship
University of Wisconsin-Madison has a large and active Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, with thousands of students enrolled annually in its undergraduate
courses. The Department offers an undergraduate major and certificate, a Ph.D.
minor, a Master’s degree, and is the home for a certificate in LGBT Studies.The Department
also has a Gender and Women’s Studies Research Center, which hosts scholars from the U.S.
and other countries for visits ranging from several days to a year, In addition
to the Department, gender-focused course topics are taught and
research is conducted in departments throughout the campus. Of special note is
the M.A. and Ph.D. program in women’s history within the History
Department. The program emphasizes
historical connections, interactions, and comparisons across geographic
boundaries.
Level of Collecting
Ideally the aim is for a "comprehensive" collection, but as more expensive electronic items proliferate at the same time as the budget diminishes, this is only achieved by reliance on interlibrary loan with other institutions in the University of Wisconsin System and elsewhere through Worldcat.
General Scope of Collection Development by the Women’s Studies Librarian and Relationship to Area Studies
The Women’s Studies librarian is responsible for collecting
English-language materials relating to women’s studies and gender-based
scholarship in the social sciences in all formats (print, audiovisual,
microform, and electronic.) Area studies librarian-selectors collect the women’s studies
material related to and published in their geographic areas, in English as well
as vernacular languages. As a result, most of the material selected by the Women’s
Studies librarian comes from North America and the U.K.
Works that transcend a region of the world (e.g., a cross-cultural comparison of
the effects of globalization on women workers in Mexico and South East Asia) are
the responsibility of the Women’s Studies librarian.
Subject Areas Collected by the Women’s Studies Librarian
Women’s Studies as a discipline, including history of the field, biographies of people associated with the field, feminism
in the academy, feminist research methods [HQ 1180 and elsewhere]
Sociology, including the study of women in self-selected and socially-defined groups (women’s organizations, minority
women, lesbians, mothers, etc.); women in various classes (e.g., working class);
the study of social problems affecting women (e.g., prostitution, rape, domestic
abuse, incest); girls' studies; the intersections of gender with race, class, ethnicity, sexual
preference, and other “differences;” welfare, welfare reform, and poverty;
women's sexuality; women's domestic partnerships and marriage; women in prison; decisions on
childbearing and other aspects of motherhood, and aspects of childcare that impinge on women. [HQ and elsewhere in the H’s]
Economics and work, including research on women
in the workforce, labor organizations, unwaged work, women in management, women
executives, gender differences and discrimination in various occupations;
domestic workers; women and leadership, women/gender in
economic development in developing countries and elsewhere; effects of
globalization on women’s work [HQ 1240]; and feminist economics
[HQ1381]. Women in business and corporations are the responsibility of the Business Library.
Feminist theory, including critiques of social
political, philosophical, and scientific theories of women’s nature [HQ 1190];
and ecofeminism. [HQ 1233]
Political science, including studies of gender
differences in political participation and attitudes, women’s roles in political
movements and electoral politics; comparisons between and among countries [J];
gender differences in the effects of war [D; J]; feminist movements around the
world [HQ]; women’s peace movements; international women’s human rights[J, K];
gender and migration. [JV and HD]
Religion and Philosophy. The development
of a Religious Studies Program has made collection of material on women and
religion more important for UW-Madison than it was formerly. Works collected by
the Women’s Studies librarian emphasize feminist theology; the roles of
women in established religions and denominations, including women clergy,
saints, and other leadership positions; feminist analyses of sacred texts; and
women-centered religions and religious movements. Women’s Studies collection
development in philosophy focuses on feminist philosophy and ethics and works
about women philosophers. [B]
History, including history of women transcending
area studies' boundaries, histories of subjects historically primarily concerned with women
(e.g., housework); excludes most North American women’s history, which is the responsibility of the Wisconsin Historical Society Library.
Education, including examinations of the
education of women and girls historically and in the present, the role of women
in higher education, educational equity. MERIT has some responsibility in this
area, mainly with respect to gender differences and equity in the K-12
classroom, and works on female school teachers and administrators, as does the Education Librarian, particularly for higher education
[L]
Psychology, including studies of gender role
socialization, gender differences in behavior, women in psychology, development
of girls. The Social Work Library has responsibility for clinical aspects of psychology and gender.
[BF]
Anthropology, including cross-cultural studies
of women’s experiences and roles, ethnographies focused on women and/or gender
divisions. [G]
Health, including social and political aspects
of women’s health matters, such as reproduction, contraception, workplace
hazards, substance abuse, HIV/AIDS and other socially-transmitted diseases;
governmental policies affecting research and access to health care for women;
and international women’s health factors. [R] The Ebling Library has
responsibilities in this area, especially for clinical works and the history of
women in medicine and the history of women’s health issues.
Biography, autobiography, and memoirs, includes
women notable for achievements in fields collected by the Women’s Studies
librarian or collected works for notables transcending other divisions of
responsibility among campus libraries and selectors (e.g., women scientists);
excludes literary works, which are collected by the Humanities selectors and
others. [CT and elsewhere]
Sports, including history of women in various
sports ; gendered social aspects of sports, recreation, and leisure.
[GV]
Bibliography [Z 7961-7965, or in subject classifications]
Currency and Contemporary Emphasis and Relationship to Format
Up-to-date information is of great import to analyses of women’s status and
issues. The advent of the Internet has been a major boon to the field, providing
working papers, research studies, newsletters from women’s organizations and
other watchdog agencies, and much more. Accordingly, the Women’s Studies
librarian selects numerous (and mostly free) online publications for
cataloging in the online public access catalog (Madcat) and/or for links on her subject-organized web pages and research guides. Interests in women of all
ethnicities within the U.S., women in other countries, and global connections are all paramount in women’s studies. Documentary video/DVDs are used extensively
to depict and analyze the conditions of women’s lives, media representations of
women, and gender identity issues, and therefore these formats assume a larger
place within the Women’s Studies librarian’s purview than they may for other
selectors. Though the emphasis is contemporary, the Women’s Studies
librarian also selects women’s history titles that transcend the traditional
area studies' divisions within Memorial Library, as well as recent North American
women’s history and biography not duplicated in the Wisconsin Historical Society
Library. The Women’s Studies librarian also collaborates with the European
History librarian and other area studies librarians to assure that the needs of the Ph.D. students and faculty
in women’s history are met, particularly with respect to electronic and
microformat resources.
Due to the contemporary emphasis and to the strength of women’s studies
collecting that has gone on in Memorial Library since the dawn of the field (and
to the Wisconsin Historical Society – in particular its assiduous acquisition of
"women’s liberation" and other feminist periodicals), the vast majority of
selections are current publications; retrospective acquisitions are mainly electronic back files of periodicals and large microform sets.
Out-of-Scope or Lightly Collected
Juvenile literature is out of scope. Recognizing that today’s popular work is
tomorrow’s primary source, representative examples of self-help, and other
popular works are selected for the collection, but primarily from gifts and
weeded “last copies” from College Library. In order to facilitate research in
the history of the field of Women’s Studies itself, representative textbooks and
curricular anthologies are treated similarly. Vocational guidance and career
training are out-of-scope. Also out-of-scope are most works on the
female-intensive professions (nursing, teaching, librarianship, and social
work), as well as women lawyers, physicians, and engineers, all of which fall
within the responsibilities of other campus libraries. Exceptions: works on
women and two or more of these professions; women in the professions
generally.
Types of material
All types of material are collected: print books, e-books, print serials,
e-serials, technical reports, databases, dissertations, and grey
literature.
All types of format are collected: print, microform, audiovisual, and
digital.
Special Collections Although not the responsibility of the Women’s Studies librarian,
Memorial Library's Cairns Collection of American Women Writers,
1650-1930 is a literary collection
with relevant material.
Other Resources
As alluded to above, all libraries and selectors
on campus have some responsibility for Women’s Studies-related material. The
main interactions are
Within Memorial Library:
- Area Studies (see above)
- European history – women’s history
- Humanities -English – American and British women’s literature; cultural studies; film; communication arts and journalism
- Reference – reference works on women and gender
- Social Sciences – gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender topics; family studies and parenting
College Library’s Women’s Collection – core undergraduate collection; non-archival
MERIT – gender and education, K-12
Ebling – women’s health, particularly clinical aspects; history of women in medicine; history of women’s health issues
Kohler Art Library – women artists, images of women in art, etc., classed in N
Law Library – women and the law and women in the criminal justice system; women lawyers [classed in K]
Mills Music Library– women composers and compositions, singers, bands, etc. classed in M
Social Work Library – therapeutic aspects of women’s issues, including disabilities and addictions; feminist ethic of care
Steenbock Library – home economics, traditional women's magazines, rural women
Wisconsin Historical Society Library – North American women’s history; social action oriented women’s periodicals
Builds on and updates policy drafted by Sue Searing in 1992. Revised in July, 2004, by Phyllis Holman Weisbard, Women's Studies Librarian. Mounted March 11, 2005. Updated December 12, 2007, May 3, 2011, July 20, 2011.