New dawn for historic suffragette journal
Updated
One of Australia's first feminist journals has entered the digital age thanks to the efforts of a Melbourne woman.
The Dawn is available in the digital collection of the National Library of Australia (NLA) from today, just in time to mark International Women's Day.
It was first published in 1888 by Louisa Lawson, the mother of poet Henry Lawson, and covered issues from the campaign for equal pay and women's suffrage to the evils of corsetry.
It closed in 1905 when Lawson became ill - just three years after most Australian women won the right to vote.
The campaign to digitise The Dawn was launched by Melbourne's Donna Benjamin last year, after she discovered there were no plans to create an online record of the journal.
She says it is an overwhelming feeling to know that her mission is now "home and hosed".
"The Dawn is a seriously significant publication - it was more than just a localised newspaper or magazine," she said.
"It played a part in the global suffrage movement because it was sent to women overseas.
"The Dawn tells a part of history that hasn't been recorded in major newspapers - it paints a very different picture of what life was like at the time."
It cost Ms Benjamin about $2 a page to get the journal online - a total of around $7,000 that she reached with the help of a variety of donors, including politicians and "rock-star feminists".
"The library was originally going to scan the microfiche but ... the quality wasn't good enough," she said.
"There is one sole surviving copy of the entire publication, held by the State Library of NSW.
"They agreed to provide that so the originals could be scanned. And that's quite extraordinary."
The Dawn - whose banner states that "A day, an hour of virtuous liberty is worth a whole eternity in bondage" - can now be read on the NLA's Trove website.
Ms Benjamin says time will tell just who the main audience will be, but expects interest to come from "broad and surprising" places.
"I got a lot of support from the genealogy network in my campaign so I expect people who are researching the history of their ancestors will be interested," she said.
"Obviously historians and academics who are doing research into a particular period in time. But I think pretty much anyone will find something of use if they are interested in what that time was like."
Apart from the articles, she is "really looking forward to the advertising".
"You look back at different ads in magazine and it gives you an insight into what life was like," she said.
The manager of digitisation and photography at the NLA, David Ong, hopes others will follow in Ms Benjamin's steps and take action to digitise a publication.
He says while the NLA's budget can not always stretch to cover the process, individuals can help with funds - as was the case with The Dawn.
"It is really important for us to be digitising content both for access now and access in the future," he said.
"The way I see it, we're making available the significant day-to-day events of the time to many generations of the future."
Topics: library-museum-and-gallery, arts-and-entertainment, information-and-communication, print-media, internet-culture, feminism, community-and-society, australia, vic
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