Every region of the world has seen the growth of women's resource and documentation centers in the past few years. face problems of how to organize these resources in order to make most effective use of them. Some women's groups are beginning to use new computer-related technologies and telecommunications for documentation, information and communications. Others need good manual systems. Isis International recently organized a training workshop in Santiago, Chile on the organization and operation of information and documentation centers on women for women's centers in Latin America. It was an exciting experience that we would like to share it with you, first through the pages of Women in Action and later, we hope, through further training workshops with the participation of women's groups from other regions.
The past decade has seen the creation of specialized documentation centers in Latin America as a result of the increase of information on women's issues. These centers are bases of fundamental support for the women's movement in different areas. They are essential to make the presence of this movement evident in our region.
The growing quantity and quality of information on women has stimulated the dissemination and flow of information and has created the need to systematically collect the experiences and accumulated theory of groups and individuals linked to women's organizations, academic centers, grassroots groups, women's houses and international bodies, among others.
Although the need for this systematization is recognized, only a few centers have been able to carry this out, because of the amount of human and financial resources required or because documentation is not a priority area for some institutions.
In this context, Isis International planned this Workshop for the purpose of sharing with women's groups and institutions in Latin America the criteria and methods used in the organization and implementation of its documentation centers. We saw the need to organize a meeting to talk about and come to agreement on criteria and methodologies to facilitate the flow and dissemination of information on women that has grown up especially in the past decade. We saw this meeting as indispensable for going forward in our reflection and action in the area of information and documentation.
During the workshop it became clear that at least in recent years basically two elements have characterized the work of documentation centers and institutions dedicated to information and communication on women's issues: one is the commitment to women and the other is use of new technologies that have increased the efficiency of information processing and dissemination.
This has resulted in the recognition of the elements of women's identity, together with their diversity and in the selection of instruments that can make women's reality more visible and transmittable. The increasing information work in various areas has assisted in bringing this about, but this work has not been one of mechanical extrapolation. Rather the information work has constantly been adjusted to the particularities of the issue.
The groups and institutions that participated in the workshop are mainly NGOs that have played a fundamental role in society especially through their support of women's movements. They have expressed the need to link their efforts in building up experiences and theoretical reflection to those of other organizations. They analyzed the benefits of information networks and of collaborative efforts to support women.
From this discussion there emerged the need for a cooperative effort to strengthen communication channels as a step towards the formation of a net work of documentation centers on women.
This meeting also emphasized the need to situate information work within the local reality while at the same time, participating in collaborative efforts. However, the diversity in the organization and implementation of the centers also revealed the need to find forms of support that can strengthen the information work of each of the centers and that will, in the near future, result in better working together.
Out of the workshop the idea arose of formulating of a regional project that would assist the centers that participated in this workshop and others interested in these issues. The aims would be to increase the capacity of human resources, to work towards compatibility of methodologies, the improvement of existing equipment and the enrichment of a standard language for the analysis and retrieval of information concerning women. All this would contribute to a better dissemination of the achievement of the women's movement.
M. Soledad Weinstein
M. Rebecca Yanez
Statement by Participants
In the last few decades, women in different regions of the world have been discussing and finding new solutions to the problems of development from their own perspectives. The study of women's situations and women's issues has acquired new importance and value today as can be seen by the studies, courses, seminars, projects and study programs being undertaken by institutions, organizations and groups.
At the same, time, women's documentation centers have collected a wealth of resource materials — books, magazines, bulletins, packets, guides, pamphlets and various documents — for use by women and others. These centers have become support tools essential for reinforcing the work of great numbers of groups and institutions that are directly involved with women's issues.
The need to systematize and organize this vast wealth of scattered materials has led women in different countries of Latin America to set up documentation centers. This concern was expressed ever more clearly at the Latin American feminist meetings in Peru (1983), Brazil (1985) and Mexico (1987). During these meetings the bases were laid for working together among women involved in information and documentation. The "Workshop on the Organization and Functioning of Information and Documentation Centers on Women's Issues" organized by Isis International in November of 1988 in Santiago, Chile is a continuation of these initiatives directed at the creation of a future network of documentation centers that can assure a real, democratic and efficient exchange of information.
For these reasons, we would like to reiterate the agreements of the previous meetings to be sure that we are committed to this path, that is, to building up the collective memory of the women's movement. We are those who are collecting, organizing and promoting our histories, literature and investigation. We are reconstructing all this information based on a feminist vision of the world.
The history of women has not been recognized, nor is it found in history books, because official history maintains a unilateral and misogynist perspective that excludes us. We must recapture this history, our history. We would like to reiterate that we are actors, even though we have not yet been recognized as active and present subjects. We are half of humanity and we demand to be present.
Our centers constitute unique sources of information on women's lives. They are fundamental spaces that register the day to day protagonism of women: our activity in the village, our presence in the factory, in the university laboratory or in the solitude of creativity.
The economic and social crisis of our countries, burdened by external debt, has made access to education and culture very difficult. The growing impoverishment of wide sectors of society has transformed books and documents into luxury items. Documentation centers such as ours constitute an alternative in this situation.They are spaces that cannot be classified as academic or elite: a growing number of people from different sectors are using our services: college and university students, union and neighborhood leaders and those who are studying and producing knowledge about women's situations.
Women's documentation centers are becoming more and more important and there is a need to support and finance their creation, development and operation.
The existence of documentation centers on women has placed on the table issues that are not found in research and information associated with academic institutions such as universities and various other research and documentation centers. Their existence is beginning to make itself felt among individuals and institutions with decision-making power in the implementation of programs and policies regarding women.
Information is power and we want to recover this power to share with all women.
Santiago, 19 November 1988