META-EU – United We Search

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The German EU Council Presidency 2020 provides an extraordinary opportunity to call for your support for our vision of a common reference database of European lesbian/women*/gender libraries and archives.
Feminist heritage institutions have been founded in almost all of the current 27 European member states. The initiative META-EU – United We Search shows how national sources of information can be transferred to a European context, in order to make women’s history visible and to promote it transnationally. In order to ensure this, the initiative has been built on well-established and proven structures.










The Digital German Women’s Archive (DDF) is the specialist portal to the history of the German-speaking women’s movements. The DDF went online in 2018 and has been institutionally funded by the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth since 2020. The DDF constitutes the archives, libraries, and documentation centres of the i.d.a. umbrella organisation – currently 33 feminist institutions from five EU countries (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Northern Italy) – which have had their materials published in the DDF’s META catalogue.





Since 2012, the i.d.a. umbrella organisation has been working on the networking and digitisation of its members’ inventory data. The joint META catalogue is innovative and unique to Europe: specialist literature, contemporary historical documents and inventory data are now accessible online for educational and scientific purposes, as well as for the public via this research tool.





The goal of the META EU – United We Search initiative, together with information and research institutions from all EU member states – is to develop a pan-European research tool to continuously improve access to feminist and women’s knowledge in Europe.
The development of this pan-European research resource





  • promotes the visibility of European feminist heritage institutions.
  • significantly improves access to knowledge of women’s and gender studies, lesbian and women’s history and movements in the European Union.
  • will only succeed as a joint project.





If you are interested in this initiative, please contact:
marius.zierold@ida-dachverband.de
karin.aleksander@digitales-deutsches-frauenarchiv.de









		
	
			

			
									
						

							

								

									Category : European Network