Women & Social Movements
Project Description
The UCF Libraries, in collaboration with Women’s and Gender Studies, is requesting $32,000 ($32,500 less a $500 cost share from UCF Libraries) for the one-time purchase of Women and Social Movements in the United States – Scholar’s Edition, from Alexander Street Press. This collection will benefit UCF students and faculty, especially in programs including Women’s & Gender Studies, History, Anthropology, Political Science and Sociology.
The initial quoted price for UCF based on FTE and other factors was $50,000, but after careful negotiations and the opportunity to compete in the Technology Fee process, Alexander Street Press has agreed to a 35% discount based on our existing collections from them. The savings of $17,500 make this an exceptional offer.
Women and Social Movements is both a database and a peer reviewed journal. It brings together innovative scholarship, primary documents, books, images, essays, book reviews and web reviews, teaching tools and more. It is organized around document projects, works of scholarship that link an interpretive essay to 30 or more related primary documents, leading users step by step from discovery to contextual understanding, which can be tremendously beneficial in facilitating undergraduate student learning, as well as scholarly research for graduate studies. Some examples of primary sources include:
- The History of Woman Suffrage (six volumes, 1881–1922).
- Proceedings of the national conventions of women’s anti-slavery societies in the 1830s.
- Women’s Rights Conventions (1848–1969).
- Annual conventions of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (1874–1898).
- Publications of the League of Women Voters (1920–2000).
- More than 50 state reports addressing gender bias in the courts.
- A collection of the writings of 80 black women suffragists, totaling 1,500 items and more than 15,000 pages, with links to online documents that provide access to 1,000 additional writings of these activists.
- The History of Woman Suffrage (six volumes, 1881–1922).
- Proceedings of the national conventions of women’s anti-slavery societies in the 1830s.
- Women’s Rights Conventions (1848–1969).
- Annual conventions of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (1874–1898).
- Publications of the League of Women Voters (1920–2000).
- More than 50 state reports addressing gender bias in the courts.
The creator of Women and Social Movements is Alexander Street Press (ASP), which is a highly respected publisher of quality scholarly resources. UCF already owns many other products from ASP, including 16 streaming video collections, resources for film, theatre and music, etc. Adding Women and Social Movements will provide a broad collection for interdisciplinary fields such as women studies and social sciences. Alexander Street Press will allow fair use of the content for educational purposes, including embedding links into Web Courses and Canvas. Access would be available to all UCF students and employees, with off campus access enabled by Shibboleth authentication.
Maintenance of this collection requires a small annual platform fee that is typical for digital collections of this quality. UCF Libraries will fund this annual fee from existing funds. All content and functionality associated with. Women and Social Movements will be hosted by ASP, so there will be no new demands on UCF staff or infrastructure.
Student Access to Project Resources
Women and Social Movements has the potential to benefit all UCF users who are interested in subjects in women studies, social sciences, humanities. The collections selected for purchase closely align with UCF courses in Women’s and Gender Studies, interdisciplinary studies, history, anthropology, sociology, and philosophy. However, it is likely that students in other areas of study will find relevant information in this large collection. Based upon the major areas in Women and Social Movements, we have identified the programs and colleges that are likely to benefit the most from the purchase of these collections; these programs have combined enrollment of 15,214. The table below shows the major areas of study that will directly benefit by the purchase of Women and Social Movements.
COLLEGE OR PROGRAM FTE
College of Arts & Humanities 5,834
Sociology 639
Anthropology 643
Psychology 2,523
Political Science 791
Office of Interdisciplinary Studies 216
Communication 1,367
Education 3,201
TOTAL 15,214
Women and Social Movements can be accessed by an unlimited number of simultaneous users, and there is no limit to number of downloads. Its content will be available to all UCF students, faculty and staff anywhere, anytime, 24/7. UCF will own the collections and therefore meet the instructional and research needs of the UCF community well into the future. The online materials will also benefit UCF Regional Campuses, online courses, and distance education programs. Students and faculty will be able to discover Women and Social Movements content by searching the UCF Libraries catalog, QuickSearch, subject databases, Library Research Guides, and internet search sites linked to our catalog such as Google Scholar. All content and features will be accessible through the Alexander Street Press user-friendly interface that provides options to browse by subject, author, or title. All materials are offered in full text HTML and PDF format, and are easily printed, emailed or downloaded to read on a mobile device, laptop or computer.
Benefit to Student Learning
Women and Social Movements is both a database and a peer reviewed journal. It brings together innovative scholarship, primary documents, books, images, essays, book reviews and web reviews, teaching tools and more. The content leads users step by step from discovery to contextual understanding, and therefore directly supports student learning by providing content for course papers, projects, and study. Women and Social Movements will greatly benefit UCF students and faculty and is designed to support teaching and research. Dr. M.C. Santana, the Director of Women’s Gender Studies, strongly supports the purchase of this resources. As Dr. Santana states in her letter the content can be easily integrated into several courses to enhance student learning. The following comments were provided by UCF faculty. These comments speak to how the product will benefit student learning and research.
Women and Social Movements in the U.S. Scholar’s Edition will provide UCF students and faculty, especially in programs including Women and Gender Studies access to primary research materials not available. For example, in our class WST 3460 Women, Race and Struggle we study the journey women of color had in our nation. Unfortunately, many of the documents, letters, diaries, newspaper clipping and books are rare because the authors were mostly illiterate or had no resources to be published or used as a source in a news story, therefore the importance of this collection on social movements. Women are an integral part of the history of the United States but unfortunately the small portion we have about them comes from the white and upper class women of the time, thus not covering the working class woman of any race. The course WST 3522 First and Second Wave Feminism is yet another important theory class required of our minors that will benefit greatly by having access to the words of women of color and women of the time. Furthermore, our course offerings are almost entirely online for the Minor in Women’s and Gender Studies and entirely online for the undergraduate and graduate Gender Certificates. Having this digital collection is an asset for our junior scholars and it will provide many opportunities to investigate the past. I strongly support this particular collection because as a researcher and a teacher I am aware of how rare and special it is.
(M.C. Santana, Ph.D. Director, Women’s and Gender Studies)
I am writing to support the Women’s Studies technology fee request for the “Women and Social Movements in the U.S. Scholar’s Edition” Collection. This collection will prove to be a valuable resource for UCF Women’s Studies students because of the wealth of digital primary source materials and scholarly documents available. The collection will also prove valuable to faculty, as it includes teaching tools related to document projects. Within increasing online offerings, digital collections—like the “Women and Social Movements in the U.S.”—will improve learning for UCF students because it breaks down the digital divide and increases engagement with primary documents. Access to this collection will expand the pedagogical style of Women’s Studies courses because it allows faculty and students to emphasize research and the study of primary documents that led to social change. As one of the few collections that include digital access to Black Women’s Suffragists’ primary texts, it also increases access to a diverse representation of women’s lives and allows for faculty to show the progression, changes, and relationships between current social structures and U.S. history. The proposed technology fee will benefit all Women’s Studies students, from those being first introduced to suffragists in WST 3015, “Introduction to Women’s Studies,” to those students in theory courses like WST 3522 “First and Second Wave Feminisms,” and to those seniors completing their own research in WST 4002, “Research in Women and Gender Studies.” As a scholar in anthropology of gender, I believe this collection will benefit not just Women’s Studies students but also those students in my own courses, and the Humanities and Social Sciences more broadly. The proposed technology fee is an effective use of student’s money and our resources. Should you have questions about my recommendation, please do not hesitate to contact me.
(Joanna Mishtal, Ph.D. Associate Professor Department of Anthropology)
I am writing in support of the Tech Fee Grant Proposal for the purchase of the digital reference collection titled “Women and Social Movements in the U.S.¬ Scholar’s Edition.” The collection, which is offered by Alexander Street Press, includes new full-text material by 11 Black Women Suffragists whose papers are scattered across numerous archives. In addition, the database includes 90,000 pages of reports from Federal, State and local Commissions on the Status of Women between 1961 and 2005. Students and scholars using the database will also have access to more than 160,000 pages of full-text documents written by more than 2,450 primary authors. Access to these rare primary source materials and the secondary contextualizing documents would be enormously valuable to teaching and scholarship across the disciplines. My teaching and research focuses on the southern United States in the period 1870-1940. Women marched at the forefront of social change in that era in the South as well as the rest of the nation. Having access to these documents will enhance my own research and will enable my students at both the graduate and undergraduate levels to engage with the primary sources in ways that are not currently available to them This will encourage scholarship at all levels in the period and promote further inquiry into the role of Florida women’s activities in national and international social movements, a neglected area of study. I strongly support the proposal to acquire this collection through the use of Tech Fee Grant funding. This collection has broad implications for students and faculty in multiple disciplines and will add critically important material to the library’s holdings.
(Connie Lester, Ph.D. Associate Professor of History, Editor, Florida Historical Quarterly, Director of RICHES™ of Central Florida)
The UCF Libraries is committed to work directly with faculty and the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning to publicize these materials. The Libraries will offer informational materials to distribute during various events, such as the Faculty Development Conferences. In addition, librarians will instruct students about Women and Social Movement during Information Literacy sessions. The database will benefit faculty by providing content for faculty research and content for course assignments.
Project Success Metrics and Assessment Plan
The UCF Libraries will measure the success of Women and Social Movements through usage reports and satisfaction surveys. COUNTER reports (an industry standard format for online usage statistics) will track which titles are used and the number downloaded. Selected faculty and students will be asked for comments these products. It is expected that usage will increase by 10% to 20% per year in the first three years. The UCF Libraries does not have a product similar to Women and Social Movements. It is expected that students and faculty will find the content highly useful. The UCF Libraries will provide training on the use of the content through a host of outreach opportunities to both students and faculty. Bibliographic instruction sessions, face-to-face reference sessions, and LibGuides will all be used to promote the collection and provide needed instruction.
Project Sustainability
The requested funds will cover the entire cost to purchase perpetual access to Women & Social Movements. The Libraries will catalog the content, maintain links, and support access. Any recurring costs for maintenance of the collection will be paid for using library funds. Content is hosted by Alexander Street Press, and there is no impact on staff resources.
Technology Fee Proposal Budget Narrative
The requested funds will cover the entire cost to purchase perpetual access to Women and Social Movements. The Libraries will catalog the content, maintain links, and support access. Any recurring costs for maintenance of the collection will be paid for using library funds. Content is hosted by Alexander Street Press, and there is no impact on staff resources.
The requested $32,000 in technology fee funding combined with the $500 UCF Libraries cost share will cover the entire purchase of Women and Social Movements. There are no additional charges for the initial purchase. The UCF Libraries will cover the annual platform fee that is common for large digital collections of this quality. All content and functionality associated with Women and Social Movements will be hosted by Alexander Street Press, so there will be no new demands on UCF staff or infrastructure. The initial cost per student simultaneously served is $2.14 ($32,500 / 15,214 = $2.14). As low as it may appear, this price per student could be even lower because there is no limit to the number of times students and faculty will access the products over time and UCF will have perpetual rights to the content. The initial quoted price for UCF based on FTE and other factors was $50,000 for both collections, but after careful negotiations and the opportunity to compete in the Technology Fee process, Alexander Street Press has agreed to a35% discount. The savings of $17,500 make this an exceptional offer.
Space Administration
No space is needed for the project.