After a few setbacks in trying to find a replacement person for my Cultural Research topic I finally found Stephanie Kwolek who invented Kevlar. The first thing I did after finding information on her was to write some questions I hadn’t yet found sufficient answers to. I emailed one of the OSU librarians but have not heard back from her yet. The questions I sent to her were: what technology was available to women in the 1960-1970’s and how common was that technology in homes? How many female chemists are there now compared to the 60’s? Is it easier for women to enter the chemistry field today than in the 60’s? I do know some of the answers to these questions but I was wanting to find more detailed in-depth answers and that is what I hope the librarian can help me with.
I also used the Answerland chat service where I told the librarian I was looking for answers to the following questions: what technology/tools did Stephanie Kwolek use in creating Kevlar? What methods were used in creating Kevlar? and I repeated a question from earlier and asked How many women were employed as chemists in the 1960-1970’s? I liked that this was a 24/7 service but it was a little hard because there was large amounts of time where I was waiting for a response because the librarian was helping two other people at the same time. She gave me links to two research database guides within OSU that I hadn’t even realized existed. Although these are a nice place to find all the databases related to women studies and chemistry it didn’t really help me get answers to the questions, but I will look into the databases further as this week continues.
The research sources I found most helpful was OSU Library, EBSCO Host, and Encyclopedia Britannica Women in Science.
