In today’s post we meet the newest member of the Speaking Out team, Elizabeth O’Brien. Elizabeth is one of our project archivists working at Glasgow Women’s Library to catalogue, digitise and make the Scottish Women’s Aid archive more accessible.
Hello, I’m Elizabeth and I am one of the two archivists working on the Speaking Out project. I’ve been in the role for nearly three months now, so thought it was about time that I introduced myself and my part in this amazing and important project.
I grew up in Scotland, before moving to Halifax, Canada, in my teens. In Nova Scotia, I completed a B.A. in History and Women’s and Gender Studies, and then a Masters in Library and Information Studies, before moving back to Scotland this summer. I think it’s safe to say that working at the Glasgow Women’s Library as an archivist on this project is totally my niche!
I’ve always identified as a feminist – I’m not even sure when it became part of my consciousness. During my undergraduate degree, I studied feminist theory and women’s social history. As I wrote my thesis and struggled to find sources, it really clicked that women have often been left out of historical narratives until really recently. Our contributions haven’t been valued and our sources and materials haven’t been kept.
As a way to combine my feminist politics and love of history, I decided to study to become an archivist. You are often in a strange gatekeeper position, charged with safeguarding parts of history, as an archivist. It’s an inherently political task to decide whose history is valued, preserved, and made accessible. Women and other marginalized groups have often been deemed unimportant and our histories have been erased from collective memory. This is one of the main reasons why I was drawn to the Speaking Out project. It’s very exciting to work as part of a team that is preserving and making accessible the history of Women’s Aid in Scotland and the ongoing fight against domestic violence.
Since starting in the role, Nicola and I have been arranging the materials in the collection. It’s a somewhat time consuming task, especially as our first series contains thousands of news cuttings, but is vital and forms the basis for all the work we do after. It is step one in making the collection accessible to researchers. Following on from this, the next few months will be spent working on the online catalogue and digitisation with a team of volunteers. We have a workshop coming up at the Glasgow Women’s Library on November 16th – please get in touch if you’d like to attend! There will also be other ways to hear about the project including talks at the Museum of Edinburgh where the Speaking Out exhibition will be displayed (11 Nov-28 Jan).
I’ve really enjoyed my first couple of months on the project and learning about Women’s Aid in Scotland. I’m excited to see feminist histories given space and I can’t wait to see what the next steps of the project bring!
