Women’s Library at the LSE
11th March 2014
Further to my post on Saturday about International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, here’s some good news in the Guardian:
The Women’s Library, the oldest and most extensive collection on women’s history in Europe, is about to open its doors again in what campaigners hope will be a permanent home, after almost a century of repeatedly having to pack up and move a unique archive of books, letters, diaries, magazines, protest banners, pamphlets and photographs.
[…] A formal opening ceremony for its new home, a handsome fourth-floor reading room within the LSE library, with speakers including the former Irish president and UN high commissioner Mary Robinson, will be held on Wednesday, and it will open to the public at the end of the month.
[…] The library was originally housed in a converted pub in Westminster, which suffered bomb damage in the second world war, was taken over from the cash strapped Fawcett Society in 1977 by the City of London Polytechnic, which later became part of the London Metropolitan University, and finally moved in 2002 to the washhouse in Aldgate, whose transformation with a £4.2m Heritage Lottery grant won an architectural prize. It was intended as its final and permanent home, but it barely lasted 10 years.
The Women’s Library has an area on the LSE’s website, and you can access a selection of the collection here.