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encourage women’s involvement leading to the delivery of projects and resources in for example,
women’s prisons, in psychiatric hospitals, projects for Black and Minority ethnic women, young LBT
women’s projects, dedicated workers supporting women with their literary, ESOL classes and so on. 3
In contrast to mainstream and academic libraries the GWL collection has been created by thousands
of individual and group donors, and in this way it both reflects directly the diverse interests of the
Library’s users but also ensures there is an unusual degree of ownership of the Library by the women
who use it. They can see the treasured texts they have donated on the shelves, know that their
cherished photographs are stored in the archive and their campaigning badges are honoured within
our museum collections.
The library was run solely by volunteers for the first 7 years of its history, the first trained
Librarian was not recruited until 10 years after the organisation was launched and our first Archivist
joined the team some 4 years later. In many ways the Library has evolved along a trajectory that runs
counter to mainstreamed libraries, museums and archives in that it began as a highly idiosyncratic,
unsystematic grass roots resource with no collections policy orientating entirely around its users
diverse needs in terms of access and has gradually turned its attention to recruiting and
professionalising its staff, on developing good governance and safeguarding its materials (whilst
maintaining and developing its fully accessible approach). In contrast, many museums and archives
have moved from a focus on the paramount importance of texts and objects and the primacy of
safeguarding artefacts to recognising their duties to ‘audience development and ‘widened access’.
Our ongoing connection to women, their lives, histories and achievements has ensured we have
uniquely close links to women’s knowledge, stories and perspectives and privileged access to the
objects, texts and materials that mark their diverse lives. Our collections consequently include
photographs, ‘zines, posters, flyers, song sheets from demonstrations, placards, banners and the
ephemera of women’s and equalities campaigns and struggles that would either not be collected by
the guardians of culture or else would not be routinely offered to them.
Shortly after I was appointed Lifelong Learning development worker in 2001 I established two
themes that have woven their way through the subsequent productive years developing learning
programmes and events at GWL, namely Living Histories and Active Citizenship. These broad
territories are firmly embedded in the arc of feminist philosophy and campaigning being concerned
with the Personal being Political, excavating and celebrating women’s Hidden Histories and enabling
and supporting women’s voices in the political, social and domestic spheres. In our day to day work
with women who are learners, audience members, volunteers and participants in events and projects
and in the overarching strategic planning of Learning at GWL we are continually oscillating between
promoting Active Citizenship (the need for women to recognise that they have rights, are entitled to
have access to the information that can change their lives for the better and that being an active
whether reading, seeing things or being involved in other cultural and creative activities can be
empowering for them, their families and their communities) and Living Histories (where women are
encouraged to make the connection between the often hidden histories of women who have
campaigned and achieved in the past and the necessity to recognise women making history today.)
The political complexion of Glasgow (and Scotland) at least from the post war period has been
distinctly left leaning, and is historically and contemporarily distinct from England. Further, Glasgow’s
identity is mythologized as ‘No Mean City’, ‘masculinised’ both in its lionisation of the working man,
the shipyards and the heavy industry through which it determined its reputation as the Second City
of Empire and the ‘workshop of the world’ and its proud socialist and labour history encapsulated in
this archetypical image of the male worker. 4 Glasgow has an enduring reputation as a hard city with
hard men, hard drinking, hard drugs and gangs (with still evident sectarianism that is often
reductively summarised as a battle between Celtic and Rangers football fans). This image of crime is
one which the ‘city fathers’ have been attempting to ameliorate through various branding strategies