Project Description
Documentary focus
Our archive aims to document the beginnings of women’s basketball at University of Michigan, Currently, the Bentley Historical Library only has finding aids for the rosters of women’s basketball beginning after Title IX in 1972. Our goal was to document the beginning and start to link the two records. We chose to document the photos, rosters, and some of the big events that were noted in yearbook records to show how women’s basketball began and evolved throughout the years. In particular, we wanted to do that by highlighting the women who were on these teams and shaped early basketball at Michigan, by focusing on team photos and rosters.
Criteria for record selection
We decided to focus on the rosters that had been published in the University of Michigan yearbook, the Michiganensian. These have already been scanned and are available online. We had to individually go through each one and search for women’s basketball to find when it began and to locate the rosters and photos. Because there are records dating back to the formation of the women’s team in the early 1900s, a big consideration was scope. Documenting over 70 years, from the beginning to the advent of Title IX would have been a large undertaking so we cut off our project when the first intercollegiate game was played in 1933 which brings us from the beginning formation of women’s basketball at U of M to more of the format it is played today.
Consideration of archival concepts and practices
A big consideration in making our archive useful and effective was centering people and users rather than records and the archivist.
Design wise, we focused on making the site useful for the user first. According to Smith & Villata on incorporating user-centered design into archives, there are several factors that make an archive useful for the user rather than the archivist (Smith & Villata 239). This includes asking questions like: can someone with no understanding of the collection or archives find what they are looking for or at least something useful/interesting? What is the preferred way that different users will access the collection – browse, search, map interface? Can they access these from the home page? There are also design considerations such as providing key access points on the landing page: and a simple, visually pleasing, and uncluttered page layout with minimal text focused on what the user needs to know, not what they might want to know.
We also wanted to make sure the information was transparent and easy to find, so we put a lot of importance on having good metadata (Shepard 264). This meant writing the roster names into the metadata and citing all of the yearbooks from which we found these photos. We wanted to place the items in the proper context and make them accessible and organized so people can truly understand and use it.
For arrangement and description, we chose a primarily chronological approach to arrangement since the sources we chose were all in sequential order to begin with and that helps preserve and convey context.
Target user group
The primary users of our archive are researchers, students, and alumni interested in the history of women’s basketball at the University of Michigan, particularly its early formation and development. Their specific needs include easy access to rosters, photos, and contextual information to understand the evolution of the sport and its cultural significance. They may also require tools for browsing or searching specific years or events, as well as clear metadata to ensure transparency and accuracy. The secondary users include sports historians, gender studies scholars, and broader audiences interested in the history of women’s sports and Title IX. These users may need more in-depth analysis and connections to broader societal and cultural contexts, such as how women’s sports were perceived and managed in the early 20th century. Additionally, educators may use the archive to teach about historical gender roles and the evolution of equity in athletics, requiring accessible and well-organized materials that align with their teaching goals.
Perspectives
The records explicitly express the perspective of institutional documentation, as seen in the rosters, photos, and yearbook entries, which primarily reflect how women’s basketball was formally acknowledged and represented by the University of Michigan at the time. These records also capture the cultural attitudes of the period, such as the separation of women’s sports into distinct sections in early yearbooks, indicating societal views on gender roles and the marginalization of women’s athletics. Missing perspectives include the voices and experiences of the women who participated in these early teams. Their personal reflections, challenges, and achievements are largely absent, leaving the archive focused on institutional recognition rather than individual narratives. Additionally, perspectives on how these early athletes viewed their role in sports and society are missing, as are insights into the broader cultural and societal forces that shaped women’s athletics during the early 20th century. There are also some missing years in our data/archival record, which creates gaps in understanding the continuity of women’s basketball during its early years. This matters because the absence of these voices and gaps in data limit our understanding of the full context of women’s basketball history and risks perpetuating a one-sided narrative that focuses solely on institutional viewpoints rather than the lived experiences of the athletes themselves.
Works Cited
Shepherd, E. (2017). Right to Information. In H. MacNeil & T. Eastwood (Eds.), Currents of Archival Thinking (2nd ed., pp. 247–269). Libraries Unlimited.
Smith, M., & Villata, J. (2020). Applying user centred design to Archives. Archives and Manuscripts, 48(3), 239–249. https://doi.org/10.1080/01576895.2020.1798790