10 AM | 05 Feb

Digitise The Dawn: help the NLA digitise the first Australian newspaper to be run by women. #feminism #geekgirl

Digitise the Dawn

Digitise the Dawn

Donna Benjamin has started a campaign to raise funds to give the National Library of Australia so that they will Digitise the first Australian newspaper to be run by women.

Louisa Lawson founded The Dawn: A Journal for Australian Women in 1888 and ran it for 17 years.  She was a pivotal figure in winning women the right to vote in Australia, and her publication played a key role in the struggle for women’s suffrage.

Donna discovered The Dawn is not yet online whilst doing research for her talk she gave at this year’s Haecksen miniconf. She contacted the library to find out if / when they might intend to add it to the Trove collection at http://trove.nla.gov.au

A brief email exchange with the Director of the digitisation project spurred her to try and raise the relatively small amount needed to see this happen.

After initially setting up a chipin, she has now set up a website with a direct paypal donate button – but will also accept direct deposits, cheques and money orders.

Even more than your money – Donna would appreciate all of us  helping to spread the word. Louisa Lawson is one of our founding feminists – and The Dawn trumpeted the charge. — Digitise The Dawn Raising funds to digitise Louisa Lawson’s Journal for Australian Women http://digitisethedawn.org http://twitter.com/digitisethedawn