About the Feminist Search Tools Project

Feminist Search Tools is an ongoing artistic research project that explores different ways of engaging with the items of digital library catalogues and their systems of categorization.

The project attempts to stir conversations around the inclusion and exclusion mechanisms that are inherent to current Western knowledge economies. It critically engages with the hierarchies of knowledge that inhabit our bookshelves, reading practices and search movements in digital library environments. Different elements of the project are made accessible on a website that documents a range of prototypes, forms of tooling, and discussions aiming at critically and creatively evaluating the back-ends of library catalogues. The Feminist Search Tools website functions as a conversation piece contextualizing online research in digital library catalogues and addressing power structures that library search engines reproduce. Through the collaborations with IHLIA LGTBI Heritage Collection, Atria and OBA, the project has been able to closer look into specific archives and archival practices as well as the use of thesauri facilitating user’s search movements.

The project is part of a long-term collaboration between the two collectives Read-in and Hackers & Designers. The Feminist Search Tools work group consists of: Read-in (Sven Engels, Annette Krauss, Laura Pardo), Hackers & Designers, (Anja Groten, André Fincato, Heerko van der Kooij, and previous member James Bryan Graves), Ola Hassanain, Aggeliki Diakrousi and Alice Strete.

Collaborators

The edited conversation “Doing and Undoing Relationships” between Sven Engels, André Fincato, Anja Groten, Ola Hassanain, Annette Krauss, and Laura Pardo has resulted from a meeting, held on 09.03.2020 in Read-in studio, Utrecht. Transcription of recording: Angelina Kumar. Editing of conversation: Katherine MacBride. Thank you to Read-in member Wan Ing Que for her careful reading.

Partners and support

Thank you to the institutions, initiatives and archives that supported the project and contributed to it in different ways: Atria | Kennisinstituut voor Emancipatie en Vrouwengeschiedenis, Vrouwenthesaurus (Maria van der Sommen & Gusta Drenthe), IHLIA LGBTI Heritage Collection, Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam (OBA), Utrecht University Library, The Black Archives (Jessica de Abreu), KUNCI library, Aphra’s Bookclub (Sayonara Stutgard), Casco’s Grand Domestic Revolution Library, Mapping Slavery, Digital Methods Summer School (Hackers & Designers, Read-in, Frauke Rohden, Lonneke VanderVelden, Emile den Tex, Density Design Milan), Unbound Libraries a work session hosted by Constant Association for Art & Media,White Privilege Workshop with contributions by Theater Generator (Wigbertson Julian Isenia, Ioana Tudor & Matthea Westerduin); moderation: Wan Ing Que (Read-in), consultation by Lieke Hettinga on the intersections of disability and trans studies, Panel “Marginalized voices in queer and trans archives” curated by Wigbertson Julian Isenia(co-founder of Black Queer& Trans Resistance) and with contributions by Eliza Steinbock, Naomie Pieter, Nina Littel, Wigbertson Julian Isenia.

With kind support by:

and:

Austrian Science Fund (FWF): 495

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The typefaces used on this website can be found on the website Libre Fonts for Womxn
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The different versions of the Feminist Search Tool are free to download und the CC4r – Collective Conditions for Reuse.

Read-in, 2024.
Copyleft with a difference: This is a collective work, you are invited to copy, distribute, and modify it under the terms of the CC4r https://constantvzw.org/wefts/cc4r.en.html