Navigating Social Networks at the Margins: Women in Science Archives, Then and Now

Abstract

“No Longer at the Margins: A Digital Project to Amplify Access to the Archives of Women in Science,” draws on feminist approaches and text-mining technologies to surface stories about women in the domestic science movement at the University of Illinois. This article describes approaches used to digitize the domestic science collection in its conceptualization and initial stages. The project was originally funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities in August 2024; the grant’s cancellation in April 2025 foregrounds the role of social networks to support archival work in moments of disruption in ways that parallel the strategies adopted by the women represented by the materials digitized