Glasgow Women’s Library Logo https://womenslibrary.org.uk/
The Glasgow Women’s Library (GWL) is a representative community archive whose collection is exclusively concerned with women, i.e. it is a monolithic, female community archive collection. Furthermore, this building depended on donation channels and volunteering, mirroring the women’s movement in the Glasgow area in the late twentieth century to fight against oppression in society and promote self-education of women.
It used to be a grassroots arts organisation founded in 1987. Initially, it was named “Women in Profile”, which changed its name to the GWL in 1991, intending to promote the contribution of women’s groups to Glasgow’s history, life and culture while it also aims to address gender imbalances in historical narratives and provide a platform for women’s voices. It started with no financial support and relied on the efforts of volunteers and women to construct it. Only through its subsequent endeavours and funding from the government and charities could it progressively increase the collection size and establish its unique mode of operation.
With its particular structural way, the library was once seen as an unstable institution. From Anne Gilliland and Andrew Flinn’s perspective, unease over ‘community’ is familiar and relates to a lack of clear definition, its ubiquitous use in government policy speaks and its associated potential for being used in an ill-defined fashion by media. (Anne Gilliland and Andrew Flinn, 2013, 3) Today, the GWL is a registered company with a limited guarantee and has been recognised as a charity by Revenue Scotland since 2000, keeping its status stable. All of the GWL’s collections come from individual or institutional donations, as mentioned in its strategic program: people from all community sections donated books, journals, magazines and ephemera.
Apart from its collection strategy of donation, the GWL arranges various events and activities like exhibitions, programs, workshops, talks and community engagement initiatives to examine women’s issues, celebrate women’s achievements, and raise awareness about gender-related topics to promote the acknowledgement of gender equality. Not only that, but the library also positively engages in community activities, providing a space for women to discuss, learn, and collaborate by providing resources, educational programmes, and supportive community networks. Here are two examples of the library’s typical activities.
Activity as an exhibition:
Two Decades of Changing Minds at Glasgow Women’s Museum, hosted by the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) from Saturday, 22nd September to Saturday, 13th October, 2012.
September 2012 marked the 21st birthday of the GWL, and the institution decided to celebrate with exhibitions, reading workshops, walks, and talks. To achieve this goal, the library invited 21 women artists to do new work inspired by GWL’s library, archive and museum artefacts like campaign badges, knitting patterns, suffragette ephemera, album covers, feminist newsletters and lesbian dime novels. (Helen, 2012) The show also invited 21 women writers to create new pieces using GWL’s collections as inspiration. “Two Decades of Changing Minds at Glasgow Women’s Museum” is the title of this exhibition, which encompasses the organisation’s reflection and retrospection of itself over the past 21 years. To expand the 21 Revolutions exhibition’s implication, the exhibition was also exhibited at the prestigious Royal Scottish (RSA) Academy during the Edinburgh Art Festival in 2013.
This initiative realised the library’s attempt to wriggle out of the primary mission and the venue’s physical confines to create a more impactful, parallel radiating artistic achievement to broadly influence the surrounding areas, thereby drawing more comprehensive attention to promoting women’s issues in the Scottish context. By bringing the exhibition to the big stage of an international art festival, the institution also achieved GWL’s original mission.
21 Revolutions Exhibition Poster
Activity as a workshop:
“Women and Education in the Long Eighteenth Century”, 8th September 2016.
On 8th September 2016, the GWL organised a seminar called “Women and Education in the Long Eighteenth Century”. According to the workshop, while many papers argued that a woman’s education was valued and socially necessary during the eighteenth century, the idea of girls being educated to prepare them for marriage, particularly in middle-class families, was a prominent theme. (Brianna, 2017) Similarly, in the second session, Mark Towsey addressed the significance of women reading history to build their essential social skills of demonstrating knowledge and clear understanding. (Brianna, 2017) The seminar’s key topic was women’s education, with music as its focus. Scholars from different countries addressed case studies from different historical contexts, bringing ideas on women’s education from Glasgow to the global level.
This seminar profoundly discussed the educational rights and the construction of women’s social status by music in the eighteenth century while prompting reflections on modern women’s right to education. Just like Lucy E. Bailey and Karen Graves mentioned in their article:
During and after the 1970s, feminist interventions in education and research were instrumental in highlighting women’s exclusions from educational practice and knowledge and dislodging artificially linked conceptions of biology as “destiny” from social processes that constrained and prescribed women’s and men’s development. (Bailey, Lucy E., and Graves, Karen, 2016. 688)
The GWL is more than just a feminist community archive; it fulfils this primary function while demonstrating multidimensional exploration and innovation. The library’s collection was sourced from donations, which has led to diverse content covering up to 27 different subject categories, providing it with great flexibility and broad coverage. This rich collection base offers maximum support for the library to organise various arts activities.
The GWL also makes full use of its archival collection status to widely disseminate its contents, as well as its mission, vision and values, through diverse formats such as exhibitions, workshops, lectures and seminars. Through these activities, the library becomes more than just a static archival storage space; it becomes an active community centre dedicated to promoting gender equality and women’s rights in all areas.
This integrated approach aims to protect women’s fundamental rights while promoting social change by advancing women’s education. With its unique and diverse collection and rich programme of activities, GWL not only meets the need for information delivery but also serves as a place of gathering and exchange, providing opportunities for people within and outside of the community to gain insights into, explore, and discuss issues of gender equality.
Bibliography
Bailey, Lucy E., and Graves, Karen. “The Changing Attention to Diversity and Differences: Gender and Education.” Review of Research in Education 40, no. 1 (2016): 682-722.
Bell, James. “Postcards from the Past: Archives, Art and Activism at Glasgow Women’s Library.” Conference paper presented at the Queering Memory, Annual Libraries, Museums and Special Collections Conference, Berlin, 2019.
Gilliland, Anne, and Andrew Flinn. “Community Archives: What Are We Really Talking About.” Paper presented at CIRN Prato Community Informatics Conference, 2013.
“Glasgow Women’s Library: A Timeline,” Google,https://womenslibrary.org.uk/about-us/our-history/gwl-timeline/#event-tl-xtpmf.
Helen. “Two Decades and 21 Revolutions.” Published 9th July, 2012. Glasgow Women’s Library. https://womenslibrary.org.uk/event/21-revolutions-exhibition/. Accessed [January 23, 2024].
Marney, L. “Mango.” 21 Revolutions: Two Decades of Changing Minds at Glasgow Women’s Library, Centre for Contemporary Art Glasgow, 21 Sept – 13 Oct 2012. Exhibitions.
McMullan, Shauna. “21 Revolutions, Two Decades of Changing Minds at Glasgow Women’s Library.” Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA), Glasgow, 2012. Show/Exhibition.
Robertson-Kirkland, Brianna. “Women and Education in the Long Eighteenth Century Glasgow Women’s Library, 8 September 2016.” Eighteenth Century Music 14, no. 1 (2017): 171-73.
