The Samuel Neaman Institute, together with The Center for the Advancement of Women in the Public Sphere (WIPS) at the Van Lear Jerusalem Institute, and the Public Knowledge Workshop won the Ministry of Science’s open call for the establishment of the Center, starting January 2017, for three years.
SHE KNOWS is the most comprehensive and rich knowledge center in Israel about women and gender. The vision of the knowledge center is to contribute to the advancement of social equality in Israel by turning gender-conscious thought into an obligatory norm in the gathering of information, research, policy development and socio-civic activity. Thus, the center will be a constant source of innovation in these areas of activity. The knowledge Center makes information and knowledge of various types and sources easily accessible and shared, in order to support gender equality initiatives and processes, serve as a source of information for all decision-makers operating in the field and enable access to information and gender data for everyone.
The Knowledge Center website contains comprehensive and varied information, including: the gender index, research reports and position papers, organizations working to promote gender equality, statistics, laws, videos, and examples of successful actions. The information is gathered from many sources: civil society organizations, government offices, state institutions, local government, academic institutions, archives and more. It is a non-profit site and the Information is provided free of charge.
The Samuel Neaman Institute staff’s contribution to the establishment of the Knowledge Center:
The first phase included:
- Comparative survey of relevant knowledge centers in Israel and in the world as an infrastructure for developing the model in Israel
- Participation in drafting the potential user needs survey questionnaire (conducted by the “Shavot” Center)
- Metadata analysis of properties derived from the survey
The second phase included:
- Characterization of the site based on metadata, developed specifically by the Knowledge Center tea
- Initiate collaborations with academic libraries in Israel and civil society organizations for information sharing purposes
- Development of the Content Database – the Sources Library – which includes the collection and cataloging of information items such as: research reports, articles and theses, position papers, videos and pictures, legislation, and best practices
- Developing a glossary (thesaurus) of gender-feminist concepts adapted to the Israeli context. The dictionary provides a basis for tagging (keywords) of all information and search processes of users. The glossary is available in three languages: English, Hebrew and Arabic.
The third phase during 2018-2019 includes:
- Participation in the development of the center and the website
- expanding the contents of the Source Library – indexing of new items that are continuously updated
- Site QA testing and bug fixes
You are invited to experience the “יודעת – SHE KNOWS – – هي تعرف‘” Knowledge Center at http://www.yodaat.org/
