In February 2014, Nottingham Women’s Centre hosted the first Feminist Libraries and Archives gathering in partnership with Feminist Library London attended by Feminist Archive North, the Women’s Liberation Music Archive, Unfinished Histories, and Dr. Sara de Jong with active support from The Women’s Library Glasgow, Women’s Archive of Wales and Feminist Archive South, as well as interest from as far as Turkey and Japan.
After a fruitful weekend of discussion, knowledge sharing and a whole lot of feminist solidarity, and as a response to the lack of networks between feminist and women centric libraries and archives in the country, we decided to form FLA: Feminist and Women’s Libraries and Archives Network (notes from the discussion are available) – read our manifesto here.
We envision this network to fulfil two purposes. Firstly, on the network side of things, we will create a directory of feminist and women’s libraries and archives which will be a resource for ourselves as well as for external audiences. We will hold regular events for networking and knowledge sharing.
Secondly, in the longer term, we will start looking at the possibility of creating a more uniform system of categorising our material where appropriate. This will take time, research and effort so for now it is something to only start thinking about.
Want to be involved? Email feministlibrariesarchives@gmail.com
Follow us on Twitter: @FLANetwork1 and Facebook @feministlibrariesandarchives
FLA Network 