ViVa, Vrouwengeschiedenis in het Vaktijdschrift (Women’s History in Scholarly Periodicals), is a multilingual bibliography of articles selected from over 80 European, American, and Indian journals on women’s and gender history. The site also provides links to archival and library collections, other bibliographies, texts, journals, and women’s sites.
The original bibliography was created by Els Kloek for the History Department of the University of Utrecht and was intended as a “reference tool for locating publications in this field, and to provide an overview of the development of writing women’s history.” After the first three volumes of the bibliography were published in print, the International Institute of Social History, one of the world’s largest documentary and research institutions in the field of social history, continued the project and brought it to the Internet in 1997. This bibliography is still being published annually in print in the Jaarboek voor Vrouwengeschiedenis. ViVa is available on the Internet from 1995 to the present.
According to Jenneke Quast, the Web contact for ViVa, there are plans to add earlier years of the bibliography and a search engine before the summer of 1999. At present, searching is not possible. Future plans also include the addition of new pages on the women’s history collection at the International Institute of Social History as well as another link page on women’s organization in Asia.
As the site is currently presented, the researcher is offered an incredible wealth of information on this topic. Each annual bibliography is subdivided into five major time period categories as well as general, theory, and historiography categories. The current year’s bibliography also includes a new titles section listing items added since the last update. Updates appear to be bi‐weekly and are clearly noted on the header. Owing to this broad categorization of the citations, the search engine promised will be a definite improvement. Articles on the topic of marriage, for example, are listed throughout all of the time periods listed. A possible current improvement would be to subdivide the time period categories by geographic regions to make browsing more efficient.
Major journals in this field are covered including Gender and History, Signs, and Feminist Review, just to name a few English language titles. A complete list of all journals covered by ViVa is available at this site with links to the journal’s home site, if available. The Institute focuses on social and labour history which is reflected in the selection of journals indexed. The introductory page welcomes visitors to suggest other titles for inclusion on this list.
Citations are clearly laid out on the page. Abbreviations are not used for journal titles, eliminating a difficulty found in a lot of bibliographies ‐ either print or electronic. Added title information is provided if the article title does not reflect the content of the article itself.
Another extremely useful section of this site is the “Other sites of interest” link. This very lengthy section provides links to other sites covering the topic of women’s history. Once again, the page is divided roughly into nine sections: New links, Conferences, Institutions and collections, Resources for women’s history, Journals, Women’s history organizations, Discussion lists, General history resources and Women’s studies. The full title for each site is given as a link; and it includes a brief description of the contents. As with many lists of links, a few were no longer available or their addresses had changed. For example, Women in American History by Encyclopaedia Britannica had moved and IWASM was not found. Constantly updating this type of list presents a more professional product.
Overall, the content of this site outweighs any of its smaller defects. Once the search engine is added in 1999, this product will be worth revisiting many times for research on women’s history. I would recommend adding this site as a link in many other women’s history sites.
