DANGO Presentation: What is the Database of Archive of Non-Governmental Organisations?
The DANGO Project at the University of Birmingham is helping researchers to find out all they can about the archives of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), charities and voluntary organisations, in a bid to encourage the growing interest in bodies such as Oxfam, Amnesty, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, and the contribution they make to our society and politics.
The project has evolved into a new project, which started in May 2008, entitled "NGOs in Britain since 1945". Consequently, even though DANGO is still being updated and maintained, and new entries added on a regular basis, the pace of growth of the database is somewhat slower than it used to be. All errors, broken links and other problems on the site should be reported to dango@contacts.bham.ac.uk. They will be dealt with as soon as possible.
DANGO, the Database of Archives of UK NGOs since 1945, is an online, free-to-access database, enabling researchers to identify NGOs that interest them, and then access both existing and new information about the content, location and accessibility of archival holdings relating to those bodies. In June 2008, the AHRC have graded the DANGO project as outstanding.
DANGO is an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project, based within the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary History in Birmingham's Department of Modern History. From November 2005 to October 2007, the team was made up of the principal investigators, Prof Matthew Hilton and Dr Nick Crowson, researchers James McKay, Jean-François Mouhot and Caroline Mullen, and the administrator, Sarah Davies. An advisory panel of Chris Cook (formerly Head of the Modern Archives Unit at the London School of Economics, author in 2006 of The Routledge Guide to British Political Archives. Sources since 1945), Melinda Haunton (National Advisory Services, The National Archives), and Christine Penney (formerly Head of Special Collections, University of Birmingham), met with the rest of the project team at regular intervals.
In conceiving the DANGO project, the team had two precedents in mind. Essentially, DANGO wanted to marry the flexibility and accessibility of an online format, with the depth of information given by Chris Cook's guides to archival sources (the most recent of which was published by Routledge in 2006). In doing so, the team was consciously following on the footsteps of projects such as the BARGE database of archives relating to German-Jewish refugees, and the Mundus project on missionary sources.
Users of the database are able to search for NGOs in various ways, such as name (including previous names and the names of related organisations), and areas of interest. Having done so, they will be presented with a brief profile of the organisations history and activities (typically 50-100 words), plus contact details (if applicable), attributed keywords, previous names, related organisations, key dates, and so on.
Once users have identified an organisation they are interested in, they are then able to access data regarding that body's archives. Links to online catalogues are provided, as well as summaries of information held elsewhere, such as in the NRAs catalogue collection, with the aim being to bring together everything that is currently in the public domain. All the essential information for users, such as location, extent and access conditions, is also provided.
However, the DANGO team is not stopping there. The database also includes a large amount of new information, both on collections that were already known to exist, and on hitherto unknown archival sources.
This information has been sourced through questionnaires to existing NGOs. These ask, amongst other things, about papers both held by the organisation and deposited with external bodies, access conditions, and a thumbnail guide to the content and scope of the collections. As such, archives completely unknown to researchers have been uncovered.
The goal of guiding researchers towards NGOs archives, of making the task of assessing their contribution to modern Britain easier to undertake, reflects the wider rationale for the project. While the new social movements of the 50s, 60s and 70s, such as feminism, environmentalism, and the peace movement, have (deservedly) attracted a great deal of scholarly attention, and much is known about high-profile organisations within those movements, such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the DANGO project was motivated by a sense that there was still a lot missing from the historical record. Many groups made the headlines, and many groups rebelled against the system, but there was also an army of less radical, less high-profile bodies; organisations that did not want to change the world or, at least, only wanted to improve a little bit of it. DANGO is a bid to facilitate research that captures the coalition nature of socio-political action, where famous groups are set alongside their less well-known (but maybe equally influential) counterparts. (more...)
With this in mind, DANGO organised an academic conference on the role of NGOs in British society since 1945, to be held in Birmingham in July 2007. As well as exploring this fascinating and emerging area of historical research, the conference will produce an edited collection that will act as a textbook for the topic. The conference call for papers can be found on this website.
The DANGO website is also intended to act as an ideas-shop for all those researching NGOs. Reading lists for specific areas are available, as are guides to sources and particularly interesting archives, alongside advice for NGOs looking to deposit and preserve their papers.
In fact, the site is full of information about the project. Visitors can view the questionnaire, get an insight into how DANGO defines exactly what an NGO is and, of course, have a go on the database. The team is hungry for feedback so please don't keep your thoughts to yourself!
If you would like any more information on any aspect of the project, or would just like to be kept updated, the team would be delighted to hear from you at dango@contacts.bham.ac.uk
