Feminist Search Tool

Applying different filters

Plunging into the library data system – the so-called back-end – of the Utrecht University library, Read-in asks: What happens when we apply different categories – such as race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, class or physicality – to the library’s search engine? What are the findings, and what do these reveal about inclusion and exclusion mechanisms of our knowledge institutes?
To address these questions, Read-in reached out to the Utrecht University Library, whose team generously shared their knowledge and expertise and greatly supported us in our search process. As such, they helped us understand what kind of information is registered about an item. They introduced the kind of information that cannot be accessed by the public search functions of the library, and for which the library can provide access:

"Specific data about persons is included in so called 'authority files'. These are stored separately from our catalogue records, which contain only 'bibliographic data', meaning a description of the publications the library owns. We do have access to the bibliographic data, but the database with the authority files is not ours, so we cannot provide you with that specific kind of information." (Staff member, Utrecht University library))

"The information you’re looking for might be included in the ‘bibliographic description’, in case of the language or the country of a publication, but if you want to speak about persons, you should maybe check the 'authority file'." (Staff member, Utrecht University library)

Given the limited time-frame of this project, Read-in decided to focus on the data, for which the Utrecht University library can provide access, and to explore possible detours to respond to the question:

How many female authors of colour and female non-Western authors are represented in the catalogue of the Utrecht University library?

To this end, we looked at the international standard MARC 21 (abbreviation for MAchine-Readable Cataloguing), which is a set of digital formats used to describe items that are catalogued, and selected those fields that responded to our search question and took them as the basis for the data set of this search tool.

About the Feminist Search Tool

The Feminist Search Tool* is a digital interface that invites users to explore different ways of engaging with the records of the Utrecht University Library, putting forward the question: Why are the authors of the books I read so white, so male, so Eurocentric?

It has been developed by Read-in in collaboration with Hackers & Designers (James Bryan Graves, Anja Groten) in the context of the project Unlearning My Library. Bookshelf Research and functions as an awareness-raising tool to stir conversations about the inclusion and exclusion mechanisms that are inherent to our current Western knowledge economy.

To this end, the Feminist Search Tool invites us all to reflect about our own search inquiries, and how the latter may be directed by our own biases and omissions. More broadly, it raises the question about the different decisions taken that influence our searches: Who is taking responsibility for which part of the search process: we, the users, the researcher, the library, the algorithm, etc.? And how does this influence our search movements and search result?

TheFeminist Search Tool works with a search field, in which a search term can be typed in. The search takes places within a selection of the records of the Utrecht University Library of works published in the period of 2006 till 2016. The choice is made by Read-in and is based on a number of MARC21** fields on which the digital catalogue of the Utrecht University library is based on. More specifically the feminist seach tool attempts to speak to the question: How many female non-Western authors and female authors of colour are represented in the Catalogue of the Utrecht University library?, such as language of publication, place of publication, type of publisher, etc. Through an interpretation of these fields, Read-in aims to offer different filters, through which to look at the records of the Utrecht University library.

About Unlearning My Library. Bookshelf_Research

The Feminist Search Tool has been developed in the context of the project Zero Footprint Campus by Department of Search. Since September 2016, members of Read-in plunged into the library data system, the so-called ‘back-end’, of the Utrecht University Library. Read-in asks: What happens when we apply other categories – such as race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, class or physicality – to the library’s search engine? What are the findings, and what do these reveal about inclusion and exclusion mechanisms of our knowledge institutes? And last but not least, how can we address the systems of power of our current Western knowledge economy?

Unlearning My Library builds on Read-in’s previous work on and collaborations around analogue bookshelf_research: in the context of the Grand Domestic Revolution Library, Utrecht, a specific library of one of Read-in’s long-term collaborators, Casco Institute,Utrecht; the ‘Lektürebibliothek’, a secondary school library of the Oranienschule Wiesbaden; and the library of Kunci, Cultural Studies Center, Yogyakarta.

Unlearning My Library. Bookshelf_Research has been the first time for Read-in to go digital with the bookshelf research, bringing with it a different set of questions.

Check our website for more information:

Read-in Website: www.read-in.info

Read-in at the Zero Footprint Campus Website: www.zerofootprintcampus.nl/en/participants/read-in/

About Read-in

Read-in is a self-organized collective since 2010 that experiments with the political, material, and physical implications of collective reading and the situatedness of any kind of reading activity. Recurring investigations include the legacy of feminist reading groups, reading aloud, the infectiousness of words, library and bookshelf research, reading (in) films, collective memorizing, (un-)disciplinary pedagogies and listening intonationally. Check the website for more information: www.read-in.info

For the Feminist Search Tool, Read-in collaborates with Hackers & Designers (James Bryan Graves, Anja Groten). Check the website for more information: www.hackersanddesigners.nl

*Using the term Search Tool, is based on Read-in’s commitment to and understanding of feminism as an one. The let’s do Diversity Report of the University of Amsterdam Diversity Commission eloquently summarizes what intersectionality is about, by introducing it as

a perspective that allows us to see how various forms of discrimination cannot be seen as separate, but need to be understood in relation to each other. Being a woman influences how someone experiences being white; being LGBT and from a working-class background means one encounters different situations than a white middle-class gay man. Practicing intersectionality means that we avoid the tendency to separate the axes of difference that shape society, institutions and ourselves.” (p.10)

**MARC21 (abbreviation for MAchine-Readable Cataloguing) is an international standard administered by the Library of Congress; it is a set of digital formats used to describe items that are catalogued in the context of a library, such as the university library Utrecht.

Contact

Read-in is a self-organized collective since 2010 that experiments with the political, material, and physical implications of collective reading and the situatedness of any kind of reading activity. Recurring investigations include the legacy of feminist reading groups, reading aloud, the infectiousness of words, library and bookshelf research, reading (in) films, collective memorizing, (un-)disciplinary pedagogies and listening intonationally.

Check the website for more information: www.read-in.info
E-mail: info@read-in.info

For the Feminist Search Tool, Read-in collaborates with Hackers & Designers (James Bryan Graves, Anja Groten).

Check the website for more information: hackersanddesigners.nl
E-mail: info@hackersanddesigners.nl