Ariadne is an information and documentation center on women/gender hosted by the

Austrian National Library The Austrian National Library (german: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek) is the largest library in Austria, with more than 12 million items in its various collections. The library is located in the Neue Burg Wing of the Hofburg in center of V ...

in Vienna. Ariadne was founded by Christa Bittermann-Wille and Helga Hofmann-Weinberger in 1992 with the aim of facilitating study on

gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures u ...

and

women A woman is an adult female human. Prior to adulthood, a female human is referred to as a girl (a female child or Adolescence, adolescent). The plural ''women'' is sometimes used in certain phrases such as "women's rights" to denote female hum ...

. It provides a digital interface for locating information by and about women. The center is located at Josefsplatz 1, A-1015 in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, which is the address of the Austrian National Library, and does not offer a separate facility for women's research.

History

Between 1986 and 1987, Christa Bittermann-Wille and Andrea Fennesz, conducted a feasibility study in coordination with the Austrian Ministry of Science, on the creation of an information and documentation center for women. The rise of

Second-wave feminism Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in the early 1960s and lasted roughly two decades. It took place throughout the Western world, and aimed to increase equality for women by building on previous feminist gains. Wh ...

and the establishment of new feminist research within academia had brought forward the dissatisfaction with the availability and depth of coverage of women's topics in traditional library collections. Similar organizations abroad, like the Atria Institute in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

and the FrauenMediaTurm in

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 m ...

, were studied. One of the biggest questions posed in the study was whether state intervention in the collection of women's documents would be accepted by institutions which already had begun women's collections as an imposition of

patriarchy Patriarchy is a social system in which positions of dominance and privilege are primarily held by men. It is used, both as a technical anthropological term for families or clans controlled by the father or eldest male or group of males a ...

. It was proposed that such a collection be housed under the auspices of the

, as it was the largest scientific library in the country. In 1991, Bittermann-Wille began a series of consultations with interested stakeholders to determine whether the project would be accepted by other women's libraries, archives and their curators and patrons. The time period coincided with the birth of the digital age and archivists and librarians saw potential in the proposal, as long as the state did not dictate what materials should be collected and retained.

Organization

Ariadne was founded by Bittermann-Wille and Helga Hofmann-Weinberger in 1992 with the aim of facilitating study on

and

. The facility provides a digital interface for locating information by and about women. Because traditional categorization of women's materials often obscured relevant works, produced limited search results, or were did not adequately represent women's works, new types of categorization were developed. Through networks with women's study institutions, historians and literary writers, Ariadne began to collect historic records to make them available for study and research with the goal of restoring the cultural memory and women's visibility in the historical record. Ariadne functions as a department of the Austrian National Library and does not have a designated reading room, nor are the works kept separately shelved from the library's other collections. The collections began being digitized and offered through a web portal in 2000 to broaden accessibility. A limitation on the material is that it is mostly available in the German language.

Collections and productions

The collections of Ariadne contain works by and about women, their works, and the movements they were involved in as found in literature and other publications, as well as in gender and feminist studies. Though the focus is primarily on Austrian women, the collection also contains material on women from other countries. The collection on the early women's movement in Austria is titled ''Frauen in Bewegung'' (Women in Motion). Digitization of women's journals, magazines, and newspapers from the time of the

Habsburg monarchy The Habsburg monarchy (german: Habsburgermonarchie, ), also known as the Danubian monarchy (german: Donaumonarchie, ), or Habsburg Empire (german: Habsburgerreich, ), was the collection of empires, kingdoms, duchies, counties and other polities ...

(1282–1806) is an on-going process. Many of the journals provide information on notable historic figures, but also illuminate those unknown activists and the associations and activities they were involved with. Collaborative works have been sponsored by Ariadne and resulted in the production of ''BiographiA'', ''KolloquiA'', and ''ThesaurA'', among others. ''ThesaurA'' was created in 1997 to provide a gendered language guide and inclusive reference to be used by archives and libraries to facilitate location of materials. The aim was not simply to make both sexes visible, rather than relying on a customary "default is male" categorization, but to also make gender less obscure in searching for materials using collective nouns, such as ''workers'' or ''movement''. ''KolloquiA'' was published in 2001 and presents an inventory of available materials, research facilities and teaching references for women's information in Austria. Designed for both feminist experts and information science professionals, the material is designed to facilitate gender research. Though the ''BiographiA'' project began in 1998, the research required to compile the 6,500 biographies in the 4-volume publication delayed publication until 2015. The

lexicon A lexicon is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Koine Greek language, Greek word (), neuter of () ...

provides biographical sketches of Austrian women from the Roman period to the 21st century. In addition to the published volumes, Ariadne hosts an on-line database of around 20,000 biographies.

References

Citations

Bibliography

* * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ariadne (documentation center) 1992 establishments in Austria Archives in Austria Feminist organizations in Austria Preservation (library and archival science) Research libraries History of women in Austria