Annual maintenance work will take place again this summer, which is why the reading rooms at the Heldenplatz location and in all collections will be closed from Friday, July 25, to Tuesday, August 5, 2025.
Due to the shutdown of the ordering system, no media orders can be accepted from Thursday, July 24, 2025, 4 p.m. to Tuesday, August 5, 2025, 4 p.m. The regular opening hours will then apply again from Wednesday, August 6, 2025.
The Frau/Gender Collection in the Austrian Web Archive has been documenting online presences related to women, gender, and equality in Austria since 2016 – including feminist and women’s rights actors, networks and initiatives, research platforms, public institutions, feminist magazines, blogs, counseling services, and arts and cultural projects.
Websites and digital platforms are important media spaces – also for discourses on women’s, gender, and equality issues. They highlight diverse perspectives, ranging from academic work and political initiatives to counseling services, cultural expression, and activist engagement.
As digital content tends to be short-lived and dynamic – changing rapidly or disappearing entirely – Ariadne curates the Frau/Gender Collection in the Austrian Web Archive to preserve this knowledge and ensure long-term access.
The collection supports both targeted searches and exploratory browsing through feminist online archives and digital discourses. A research tool for anyone interested in gender-related web content – whether academically, politically, activist-driven or personally.
Background and insights on the Frau/Gender Collection (Blog post 2021, in German only)
The Austrian Web Archive is operated by the Austrian National Library and has been preserving the country’s digital cultural heritage since 2009. In addition to broad domain crawls and event-based collections, curated thematic collections are created – such as Frau/Gender.
Due to legal restrictions, full access to archived content is only possible on-site at the Austrian National Library. Two dedicated research terminals are available at the Center for Information and Media Literacy.
Some functions – such as metadata searches or link previews – are accessible remotely.
Further information about access and archiving is available in the FAQs of the Austrian Web Archive (in German only)
