The SSHRC-funded ParléWeb partnership (PI Jason Camlot, Concordia, uOttawa lead Felicity Taylor) aims to develop coordinated and collaborative approaches to literary historical study, digital development, and critical and pedagogical engagement with diverse collections of literary sound recordings from across Canada and beyond.
At uOttawa, our case study draws upon the metadata derived from three physical collections: Artexte (a documentation centre for visual arts in Montreal); The Lesbian and Gay Liberation in Canada (LGLC.ca, a data collection housed at Toronto Metropolitan University Library); and the Canadian Women’s Movement Archives (CWMA) at the University of Ottawa. We are developing workflows for linked data creation from these collections, and linked data mapping for SpokenWeb’s Swallow.
Each of these metadata collections index material objects such as books, magazines, and audio recordings in Special Collections, while simultaneously situating these material objects in a field of actor-network relationships between people, places and significant cultural events.
The overlap between these three collections, and with a focus on audio media, is a relatively small but rich selection of oral history interviews from the Fonds of the Lesbian Organization of Toronto (LOOT), active 1976-1980. The Lesbian Organization of Toronto (LOOT) was founded in 1976 and was Toronto’s first openly lesbian feminist group. The collective included members of the band Mama Quilla II, Eve Zaremba, who would later become one of Canada’s first notable openly lesbian writers, and Lynne Fernie, a noted documentary filmmaker. Situated at 342 Jarvis St., LOOT shared the building with two other organizations; The Other Woman, and the Three of Cups Women’s Coffeehouse.
