Women's Archive for Scotland

The Glasgow Women’s Library has been awarded at grant of £410,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund to create the first ever Women’s Archive for Scotland.

Filling 500 packing boxes, material documenting the social history of women over the last ten decades has been collected by the Glasgow Women’s Library. Thirty thousand publications, letters, drawings, recordings, film and photographs collectively illustrate women’s experiences and activism over the years including family planning, the Suffragette movement and the second wave of Feminism (1960’s – 1980’s).

The Heritage Lottery funding will be used to form a purpose-built facility to house the archive within Glasgow Women’s Library’s new premises at the Mitchell Library. An archivist will be employed to catalogue, audit and conserve the material, create an on-line catalogue, and train volunteers in how to maintain the collection.

An extensive community programme will take place throughout the development of the archive bringing women together to contribute ideas and shape its future. There will opportunities for 60 volunteers from community groups to write archive interpretation and create new oral and video histories. A programme of historical re-enactments, film, talks entitled ‘Living Heroines’, discussions, oral history and art, will culminate in an exhibition at the Mitchell Library and a road show in Dundee and Aberdeen.