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Category is… The Women's Art Library: Queering metadata with the Digital Archive of Artists’ Publishing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2025

Jessa Mockridge
Jessa Mockridge*
Affiliation:
Subject Librarian - Art, Design & Visual Cultures Goldsmiths, University of London New Cross, London, SE14 6NW UK Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The Digital Archive of Artists’ Publishing (DAAP) is an ethical, open source, artist-driven database of artist books and publications. DAAP recently received Heritage Lottery Funding to support the Women's Art Library (WAL) to build their own archives on the platform. Through a series of workshops, tutorials and drop-ins, artists represented in the WAL generated anecdotal, ‘gossipy’ histories which act as access points to artists’ books that may be out of print, limited in availability within institutional or public archives or libraries, or shared digitally for the first time. I will draw on a selection of records – an archive of examples – from the Women's Art Library on the Digital Archive of Artists’ Publishing to show how the database evolves in response to artists’ needs. These gorgeous, unruly catalogue records trouble, disrupt and bend metadata for queer use.1

Type
Research Article
Information
Art Libraries Journal , Volume 49 , Issue 4 , October 2024 , pp. 148 - 157
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of ARLIS

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References

1. Sara Ahmed. ‘Queer Use’. Feministkilljoys (blog), 8 November 2018. https://feministkilljoys.com/2018/11/08/queer-use/.

2. Editor's note: See also Art Libraries Journal Vol. 46 n. 1 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/art-libraries-journal/article/abs/digital-archive-of-artists-publishing-daap-an-email-conversation-with-ami-clarke-and-lozana-rossenova/2FC7AEF23F321BB90AFB3C086FA9A17F

3. ‘D.A.A.P’. Accessed 19 May 2024. https://daap.network/about.

4. Nina Hoechtl. [Artist File]., 1991.

5. Sara Ahmed. ‘Making Feminist Points’. Feministkilljoys (blog), 11 September 2013. https://feministkilljoys.com/2013/09/11/making-feminist-points/

6. Althea Greenan. ‘Feminist Net-Work: Digitization and Performances of the Women's Art Library Slide Collection’. University of Brighton, 2018.

7. Karen Di Franco. ‘Showing the Work: Feminist Archival Practice and Exhibition’. Tate Britain, 2024.

8. Jasleen Kaur. ‘Jasleen Kaur’. Artist website. Be Like Teflon (blog). Accessed 19 May 2024. https://jasleenkaur.co.uk/be-like-teflon/.

9. DAAP. Women's Art Library. Accessed May 19, 2024. https://daap.network/item?id=Q5436

10. Bella Milroy. ‘File under Female’. 2017. https://librarysearch.gold.ac.uk/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=44GOL_SYMPHONY324351&context=L&vid=44GOL_VU1&lang=en_US&search_scope=default_scope&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=default_tab&query=any,contains,bella%20milroy&offset=0.

11. DAAP. File Under Female. Accessed 19 May 2024. https://daap.network/artwork?id=Q5446

12. Symrath Patti. The Complete Promise. 15 August 1991. Photographic images on Perspex. https://daap.network/artwork?id=Q5564.

13. Nina Hoechtl, Julia Wiegner, and SKGAL. ‘Invitation to Resarch / Einladung Zur Recherche’. 2012. Poster publication. https://daap.network/artwork?id=Q5898.

14. Kivland, Sharon. La Forme–Valeur / The Value–Form. London: domobaal, 2006Google Scholar.

15. La Forme–Valeur / The Value–Form. https://daap.network/artwork?id=Q5464.

16. Charlotte Procter. material description for Without. 2009. https://daap.network/artwork?id=Q5503

17. Carolyn Lazard. ‘Long Take’. Nottingham Contemporary. Accessed 29 January 2024. https://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/whats-on/carolyn-lazard-long-take/

18. Bella Milroy. ‘Access as Meditation’. At The Library. Accessed 29 January 2024. https://atthelibrary.co.uk/projects/soft-sanctuary-online/access-as-meditation/

19. Bojana Coklyat and Shannon Finnegan. Alt Text as Poetry. Accessed May 19, 2024. https://alt-text-as-poetry.net/

20. Carolyn Lazard, A Recipe for Disaster. https://www.carolynlazard.com/

21. DAAP. ‘our ethical standpoint’. https://daap.network/about

22. Librarians with Palestine. ‘Librarians and Archivists with Palestine – Information Workers in Solidarity with the Palestinian People’. https://librarianswithpalestine.org/.

23. Author's note: This paper was originally a short demonstration of the artists’ publishing database dovetailed on to the keynote address by Althea Greenan, the curator of the Women's Art Library, at the ARLIS conference 2023. I essentially gate-crashed the conference un-programmed and proceed in the spirit of the interloper. Jessa Mockridge. ‘Category Is…The Women's Art Library on the DAAP’. YouTube recording of 2023 ARLIS UK/Ireland Conference. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WyryRqbueI&ab_channel=ARLISUK%26Ireland