{"id":3955,"date":"2016-10-19T14:06:57","date_gmt":"2016-10-19T14:06:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/archives.library.illinois.edu\/ala\/?p=3955"},"modified":"2016-10-19T14:06:57","modified_gmt":"2016-10-19T14:06:57","slug":"womens_orgs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/ala\/2016\/10\/19\/womens_orgs\/","title":{"rendered":"Activism and Advocacy in ALA: Women’s Organizations"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Found<\/a>
Theresa West Elmendorf, the first female president of ALA, elected in 1911.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There are several units within the American Library Association<\/a> that support women in the library profession and as a whole. Many of these groups arose during the second wave of feminism in the 1960s-80s in response to political and social movements outside of the ALA.\u00a0Women in librarianship wanted the predominately-female profession to be regarded with the same respect and pay scale as other professions as well as more equity in ALA leadership.<\/p>\n

One of the first major committees that is still around today is the Committee on the Status of Women in Librarianship<\/a>\u00a0(COSWL). This committee came about after several years of advocating by ALA members and the eventual approval at the 1976 Centennial Conference in Chicago.[1]<\/a> Initially, a proposal was presented during the 1974 Annual Conference[2]<\/a> and then discussed by Council during the 1975 Midwinter Meeting.[3]<\/a> The ALA Executive Board endorsed\u00a0a set of guidelines put forward in 1976, drafted by a standing committee appointed by the ALA president.[4]<\/a> The committee has a list of seven responsibilities, all of which support the growth of women inside and outside of the field of librarianship. COSWL also sponsors several research projects, publications, and subcommittees related to women in libraries,\u00a0such as the Advance Women in Library Management, Minority Women Oral History Project, and the COSWL Study. ALA currently maintains a list of resources<\/a> on the COSWL homepage related to women’s issues.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Found<\/a>
Announcement in a Women’s Studies Section Newsletter for the 10th Anniversary Celebration<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Another ALA advocacy group that emerged in the 1980s is the Women’s Studies Section (WSS), now the Women & Gender Studies Section<\/a>\u00a0(WGSS), part of the\u00a0ALA’s Association of College & Research Libraries<\/a> (ACRL). This group “was\u00a0formed to discuss, promote, and support women’s studies collections and services in academic and research libraries.”[5]<\/a> In one of the section’s first newsletters published in spring 1987, \u00a0co-editor Deb Schnieder wrote,\u00a0\u201cThe Women\u2019s Studies Section has finally arrived and I would like to take this opportunity to welcome all of you who have joined the section.\u201d[6]<\/a> In the following newsletter, 1987-88 Chair Ellen Broidy wrote:<\/p>\n

\u201cACRL Women\u2019s Studies Section is creating its own form of earthshaking; the world (in this instance the insular world of ACRL) will never quite be the same. Our recent transformation from discussion group to section (a bureaucratic paper pushing) has brought, along with an increase in family from 50 E. Huron St., an increased visibility that should serve us well as we continue our efforts to insure a place for Women\u2019s Studies in academic libraries… The impact we make on the larger association depends in large measure on our desire to articulate and act upon our feminist principles. The clearest way we have of doing that, particularly in an organizational context, is to continue to provide a place for Women\u2019s Studies librarians and others to feel safe, challenged, and connected.\u201d[7]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In addition to newsletters, WSS also published a\u00a0Women’s Studies Collection Development Policies<\/a> in 1992, which was a project of the Collection development and Bibliography Committee as well, which sought to assist libraries facing the challenge of budge constraints and the, at the time, relatively new field of Women’s Studies.<\/p>\n

\"Found<\/a>
“Women Library Workers: We Become New”, August 1977<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There were and are several other groups within ALA that focus on women, such as the Feminist Task Force<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Social Responsibilities Round Table (SRRT)<\/a>. These groups put out a series of publications<\/a> that addressed issues of women in libraries, such as the\u00a0Women Library Workers: We Become New<\/em>, a “national newsletter of an independent organization of women library workers which was formed during the 1975 ALA Convention in San Francisco.”[8]<\/a> Other publications include the\u00a0Status of Women in Librarianship Newsletter<\/em>, Task Force on Women Newsletter<\/em>, and Women in Libraries<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Found<\/a>
Students from the Texas Woman’s University School of Library Science after driving to the ALA Conference in support of their dean and incoming ALA president, Brooke Sheldon.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The records and publications of many of these groups are housed at the ALA Archives at the University of Illinois. Their place in the archives allows for the preservation of the historical record of the activism and advocacy for women created in ALA. The University of Illinois’s\u00a0Gender Studies and Multicultural Services Librarian Cindy Ingold<\/a> used documents from inside the ALA Archives for her online project<\/a>, “How Did Women’s Groups in the American Library Association\u00a0Promote Activism around Women’s Issues in Librarianship during the 1970s?” and is a great example of how primary sources within the archives fit together for greater meaning, and how the records of these organizations stretch beyond the purpose\u00a0in which they were created. If you are interested in using materials from the archives for your own research, please contact the archives at\u00a0ala-archives AT library.illinois.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>[1] The ALA Yearbook 1977, p.106. Record Series 2\/4\/72.<\/p>\n

<\/a>[2] School Library Journal, 23(5), Jan. 1977, p.35.<\/p>\n

<\/a>[3] The ALA Yearbook 1976, p.148. Record Series 2\/4\/72.<\/p>\n

<\/a>[4] American Libraries, 7(6), June 1976, p.311. American Libraries, 7(3), March 1976, p.138.<\/p>\n

<\/a>[5] http:\/\/www.libr.org\/wgss\/.<\/p>\n

<\/a>[6] Women’s Studies Newsletters, 1986, Record Series 22\/23\/10, American Library Association Archives.<\/p>\n

<\/a>[7] Women’s Studies Newsletters, 1986, Record Series 22\/23\/10, American Library Association Archives.<\/p>\n

<\/a>[8] Women Library Workers Publications, 1970-1989, Record Series 49\/45\/10, American Library Association Archives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are several units within the American Library Association that support women in the library profession and as a whole. Many of these groups arose during the second wave of feminism in the 1960s-80s in response to political and social movements outside of the ALA.\u00a0Women in librarianship wanted the predominately-female profession to be regarded with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":567,"featured_media":3964,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[34,43,90,212],"class_list":["post-3955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ala-history","tag-american-library-association","tag-archives","tag-coswl","tag-women-librarians"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/ala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/ala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/ala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/ala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/567"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/ala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/ala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/ala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/ala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/ala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/ala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}