On Which Basis We Establish Kurdish Women’s Library?
While establishing the Kurdish Women’s Library, Archive and Research Center and setting its goals, we are both inspired by the experiences of women of the world, and by analyzing the problems encountered, we try to find ways to avoid facing the same problems.
In this respect, we aim to make the Kurdish Women’s Library, Archive and Research Center a center that ensures financial sustainability, maintains its institutional autonomy and is a dynamic subject of women’s struggle. For this, it is very important to create collective production areas on the one hand, and a support system that will not interfere with its autonomy, and to create a system based on women’s autonomy, on the one hand, in order for the center to survive financially.
Although it is a challenging goal to include each woman’s experience individually, one of the primary goals of the Kurdish Women’s Library, Archive and Research Center is to create an environment where women from democratic, ecological and women’s liberation segments can find information and space for themselves. One method to overcome this problem is to shape the center as a dynamic rather than a static space, based on its roots, and provide a discussion and sharing center at the same time. Organizing meetings with women in their own living spaces outside the center to carry out field studies and share the results achieved in order to create their own document, without waiting for the document and women to arrive, is also a precaution against this problem.
The Kurdish Women’s Library, Archive and Research Center is not just a library, but also one of the organizing centers of women’s freedom consciousness. The center positions itself as a meeting place for women to discuss their lives, dreams and problems. The aim to be a dynamic, lively and scientifically-based education and research center where studies aiming to reveal the multifaceted reality of women’s life and to raise awareness of the foundations of a free female identity despite the mentality that ignores women is also related to this.
How You Can Contribute to Develop Women’s Library?
Undoubtedly, in order to carry out such a comprehensive project, a strong scientific infrastructure, technical equipment, financial resources, and most importantly, the participation of women who are aware of the importance of such a project and see it as a need are required. In their struggle for freedom and equality, women have accomplished many things that were considered impossible until now with their highly brave steps. Kurdish women have inspired and led women of the Middle East and the world in many ways with their struggles and gender awareness. Now, as we give life to the Kurdish Women’s Library, Archive and Research Center project with collective effort and will, we draw strength from our history, our struggle and the common mind of women. Contributing to at least one of the steps listed below and taking part in the organization process will be the biggest guarantee of the success of this project, which addresses not only the present but also the future.
1. Building a Professional Team:
Building a professional team that will carry out both academic, technical and field studies of the Center is one of the primary needs. Assigning a team for each of these studies is an important step for the Center to carry out its activities in line with its goals. You can take part in one of the topics below or you can refer the women may be interested.
- Enabling institutional communication, coordination and communication between authorized bodies, and organizing events within the center.
- Carrying out the inventory, enveloping, foldering, cataloging works of the collections; opening, preserving and digitizing the created collections to researchers; developing a system that complies with librarianship criteria.
- Promoting the Center and ensuring the visibility of its work through digital networks such as social media accounts and website.
- Follow-up and execution of the administrative-financial affairs of the center.
- Organizing field studies and academic studies in line with the Center’s goals, analyzing and documenting the results.
2. Member – Volunteer Activities:
We are not talking about a Center that can only be run by a professional working team, without a network of volunteers spread across Kurdistan and all over the world. This work needs to be developed with a network of volunteers as well as professional employees. In this sense, you can share the project with the women around you, so that more women are included in the volunteer network and become members of the center. Thanks to this volunteer network, there will be a chance to reach more women and their knowledge and
documents.
3. Training Activities:
It is also necessary to provide the necessary trainings to every woman who wants to take part in this network, according to the field of their responsibility. If you are experienced in archiving, librarianship, women’s history, history of Kurdistan and the Middle East, memory, oral history studies, graphic design, publishing, software, web development, data analysis, you can prepare a training kit and contribute to the training process of the work teams.
4. Archiving:
The center aims to collect many works in the library to be created within its body. This will require extensive research and archiving studies. Researches on women, works by women writers, and works on women’s movement, works written on women in Kurdish dialects and in different languages, reaching periodical publications require years of continuous work. You can take responsibility for the collection and delivery of literary, visual and audio materials about Kurdish women in four parts of Kurdistan and abroad. For this, we mainly take the following sections as a basis.
- For the Women Writers Section; collection of works by women writers (in addition to literary products, works produced by women in different disciplines, etc.) in Kurdistan.
- For the Women’s Books Section; collection of books written about women in Kurdistan, women’s movements in Kurdistan, and books on women’s lives.
- For the Women’s Section in Periodicals; collection of women’s publications such as magazines and newspapers. Collection of news and articles about women from Kurdistan in magazines and newspapers in foreign languages.
- For the Women’s Organizations Section; collection of documents and publications of all women’s organizations, political parties, institutions working for women.
- For the Special Archives Section; collecting the originals and, if the originals are not available, copies of pictures, books, diaries and similar documents belonging to women who contributed to the history of Kurdistan.
- For the Academic Research Section; collection of research (master’s and doctoral) theses on every subject prepared by women and scientific articles published in Kurdish and foreign languages. Collection of works not written by women but about women.
- For the Women Artists Archive; collection of visual, audio and written works of women artists and documents related to the lives and works of women artists.
- For the Oral History Section; recording the life stories and memories of women, recording and collecting the stories and songs from women.
- For the Children’s World Section; games, stories and fairy tales have a great place in children’s bonding with their sociality and history. These disappear as children’s play worlds are limited to phones and the digital world. Therefore, it is very important to archive children’s games, stories, nursery rhymes and tales and bring them together with children.
5. Archive editing and sharing:
You can take responsibility by supporting the process of preserving these works in digital and printed format and making them available to the public through websites, magazines, catalogs and similar methods, as well as digital mapping, and database creation.
6. Planning and Execution of Field Studies:
One of the main goals of the Center is to conduct field studies, to collect visual and auditory written documents and to conduct oral history studies on the cultural and historical heritage and sociology of women from various ethnic, religious and cultural communities and peoples living in Kurdistan. You can take responsibility by submitting a research proposal, participating in research groups to be formed, or supporting access to information resources. You can provide support by participating in field and training studies in supporting and conducting oral history studies and research, by collecting information about women who have left their mark in the public’s memories and recording them.
7. Networking and Public Opinion Activities:
You can help from where you are to share the results of the studies carried out at the center with the society at national and international level through workshops, seminars, exhibitions,panels, workshops, conferences, symposiums and similar tools. You can also offer support to develop and strengthen relations with institutions and organizations working in the field of women’s studies and research in the international arena.
8. Budget-Financing Operations:
In order to finance the work of the center, you can take responsibility for income generating activities such as printing of books and brochures, conducting grants, funds, donations and similar activities and reaching supporting institutions.
9. Translation:
You can take responsibility for the translation of documents on the center’s work into different languages. For archival and research studies, you can support the translation of works into Kurdish, especially from Arabic, Ottoman and Persian sources.
10. Digital library:
Digital studies are of great importance so that information is accessible to everyone and organized in a way that everyone can contribute. You can contribute to works that everyone can add to and protect both today and the past in general.