Glasgow Women’s Library: a treasure trove that shows how far feminism has come
Glasgow Women’s Library: a treasure trove that shows how far feminism has come
http://womenslibrary.org.uk/
The only museum dedicated to women’s history in the UK records a century of lives using everything from cookery books to Spare Rib magazine and anti-suffragette stationery.
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An anti-suffragette, misogynistic postcard from the collection of the Glasgow Women’s Library Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian
Long before social media demanded you compress your misogyny into 140 characters, there were postcards (carrying gruesome images of a woman’s tongue being sliced in two, or mean ditties about opinionated wives) should a gentleman wish to publicly advertise his disdain for the opposite sex.
Examples of this curious anti-suffragette stationery, with its Edwardian postmarks, nestle in the temperature-controlled storeroom of the Glasgow Women’s Library alongside thousands of other items of feminist significance: whole archives from long-defunct campaign groups, stacks of the seminal Spare Rib magazine, as well as rarely collected domestic artefacts – cookery books, knitting patterns, and journals – that document the lives of individual women across the past century.
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Cookery books at the Glasgow Women’s Library. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian
When Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, officially opened the renovated premises in the former Bridgeton Public Library in Glasgow’s East End last November, she described the facility, which celebrates its quarter-century this month, as a “national treasure”. Now recognised as a collection of national significance and the only accredited museum dedicated to women’s history in the UK, the GWL’s current bevvy of supporters reads like a roll call of Scotland’s most gallus women: comedian Susan Calman recently launched her memoir there, interviewed by broadcaster Muriel Gray; while national poet Jackie Kay and writers AL Kennedy, Denise Mina and Louise Welch have all contributed work to an anniversary fundraising book. But the success of the library is as much to do with the endurance of grassroots activism and the work of two visionary women – Adele Patrick and Sue John – who recognised the power of heritage before it was sexy.
The concept was first developed by Women in Profile, a feminist arts group, co-founded by Patrick as a counter to the mainly male offerings that dominated Glasgow’s 1990 City of Culture programme.
It was a time of powerful global backlash against feminism – documented in Susan Faludi’s book, Backlash – but in Scotland, Patrick recalls, there was a “perverse flowering”, with Edinburgh’s ground-breaking Zero Tolerance anti-violence campaign, Glasgow’s library and Scotland’s first feminist magazine Harpies and Quines. The library proper began a year later as a small volunteer-run effort in a shopfront in Garnethill, later squatting with the Lesbian Archive and Information Centre on Trongate, before being offered temporary accommodation in Glasgow’s venerable Mitchell Library, only to discover its collection had grown too big. Funding, or the lack of it, has been a constant struggle over the decades.
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Today, with more than 20,000 books and 300,000 archival items, all donated, the GWL has expanded to take on 22 paid staff alongside about 100 volunteers, with guaranteed funding from Creative Scotland for the next two years. A combination of Scottish government grants and public donations of more than £1m paid for the revamp of the Grade B-listed library building in Bridgeton, which is now its first permanent home. “We are in a golden period now,” says John, “when we are talking to national galleries and national libraries as equals. It’s an unrecognisable landscape since the early 90s, and very different from the parlous state that other libraries find themselves in.There’s no other library in Europe like it,” adds Patrick. “It’s not purely academic, not hand in glove with government; some of it just feels like a crazy accident.”
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Other women’s archives in the UK
The Women’s Library
Established in 1926, as the Library of the London Society for Women’s Service, it includes the personal archives of the Guardian’s Mary Stott and Jill Craigie. Its primary objective today is to document women’s lives in Britain. It is now housed at the London School of Economics.
Nottingham Women’s Centre
The only library of its kind in the East Midlands, it has managed to retain most of its original, and often rare books and magazines
The Feminist Archive South
Based at Bristol University, and, north, at the University of Leeds, this collection includes personal and organisational archives, conference papers, dissertations and books, as well as complete print runs of journals like Spare Rib, Shrew, and Scarlet Woman.
The Women’s Liberation Music Archive
This collection pays tribute to the 1970s and 80s feminist musicians who incorporated political and social messages into their music. Its collection is housed at the University of Bristol Special Collections.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/sep/19/glasgow-womens-library-feminism-museum-womens-history-uk-cookery-books-spare-rib-anti-suffragette