FST at Digital Methods Summer School
2019 / June / Amsterdam University / During the DMI2019 we opened our research question “Why are the authors of the books we read so white, so male so eurocentric?” to new contexts which led to exploring visualisation tools and other platforms and datasets.
The Feminist Search Tool is a digital interface inviting 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 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. Please visit at https://feministsearchtool.nl for more information.
During the summer school we addressed the following question: how can we retrieve, work with, and combine datasets without reproducing or creating new mechanisms of exclusion? This led to the following:
- We revisited the Feminist Search Tool and through a visualisation tool we tried to detect different aspects of inequality within the taxonomies of a library catalog.
- We created a feminist search assistant that provides a gateway into a more gender sensitive search experience.