International Repositories, Projects and Spaces

The below alphabetical directory is a work in progress and consists of international feminist libraries and archives that we are aware of. We are also aware that there are many wonderful, new projects that might not be on our radar yet. 

Armenia

FemHouse and FemLibrary Armenia
Queer café and feminist library in Armenia. In need of solidarity, donations of money, and books to keep them going.

Australia

Australian Queer Archives, Melbourne
The Australian Queer Archives was established in 1978 and is the only community group in Australia that actively collects and preserves LGBTIQ material from across the country, and makes it readily accessible. The collections include material of national or international scope, but the heart of the Archives’ work is the collection and preservation of the historical life of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities of Australia. It includes the works of writers, artists, photographers, and performers; the papers of leaders; the records of community organizations; the posters, flyers, buttons, matchbooks of political movements or trends or bars and other venues; the stories that record lives of those in the community.

Australian Women’s Archive Project
The Australian Women’s Archives Program (AWAP), established in 1999 as the Australian Women’s Archives Project, is a long standing collaboration between the University of Melbourne and the National Foundation for Australian Women (NFAW). It was created to build knowledge and recognition of the social, cultural, historical and economic contribution made by Australian women to public and private life.

Jessie Street National Women’s Library
Jessie Street National Women’s Library is a unique specialist library dedicated to the preservation of Australian women’s work, words and history. The Library was established in 1989 and is named after Jessie Street, a lifelong campaigner for women’s rights, the peace movement and the elimination of discrimination against Aboriginal people. The Library’s charter is to collect, preserve and promote knowledge and understanding of the cultural heritage of all women; social justice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples; international friendship and peace.

The Women’s Library, Australia
A collection of over 25,000 books and pamphlets: everything from popular fiction by women through to specialist non-fiction covering issues from health, sexuality and popular culture to politics, history and human rights.

Austria

Archive of Austrian Association of Women Artists (VBKOE), Austria
Constructed by women artists themselves, like the VBKÖ itself has lived through and changed with history from the latter days of imperialism, to the fall of the Habsburg Empire and WWI, Austro-Fascism, the Nazi Era, but also through the progressive movements in the arts in Austria all the way to the current expansion of the European Union and the austerity cuts in public funding.

Frauenmuseum Hittisau, Austria
The Hittisau Women’s Museum is the first and only women’s museum in Austria. It is also the only one in the world in rural areas. It was founded in 2000 and has since shown more than thirty exhibitions on topics relevant to women. The Museum has made it its mission to make the cultural creation of women and women’s history visible, and to document them. It presents two exhibitions per year, which deal with women-relevant topics in the fields of social and cultural history, art, architecture, history.

STICHWORT, Austria
STICHWORT is a political project of the autonomous women’s and lesbians’ movements in Vienna.

Belgium

RoSa, Belgium
Since 1978 the RoSa library and centre of expertise is the place to be for information and documentation on women’s issues, feminism and gender.

Canada

The Arquives, Canada
The ArQuives is based in Canada, and aspires to be a significant resource and catalyst for those who strive for a future world where LGBTQ2+ people are accepted, valued, and celebrated.

Cabaret Commons 
The Cabaret Commons is a work-in-progress gathering place for trans-feminist and queer artists, activists, audiences and researchers. The Cabaret Commons is part of the Trans- Feminist & Queer Digital Praxis Workshop. The TFQ DPW is both a collective of, and a space for, TFQ activists, artists, audiences, writers, and researchers, working from the University of Toronto and beyond.

Canadian Women’s Movement Archives
The Ottawa Women’s Archives collection contains archival fonds and collections related to the history of women in Canada, with particular emphasis on the feminist movement since the 1960s, material which continues to grow. Based in the University of Ottawa Archives & Special Collections.

Rise Up! Feminist Archive, Canada
A digital archive of feminist activism from the 1970s to the 1990s in Canada. Initially, in 2014, it was intended to be a digital archive of three Toronto-based feminist publications from our personal history and collections: Cayenne, Rebel Girls’ Rag and the International Women’s Day Committee (IWDC) Newsletter. However, the project rapidly grew into something much more ambitious, inviting others to share their collections and stories.

Victoria Women’s Movement Archives, Canada
Established in order to preserve and provide access to important material documenting the history of women’s movement groups in Victoria, Canada. It includes original records such as minutes, correspondence, reports, newsletters, diaries, logs, photographs and audio-visual material. Based at University of Victoria Libraries’ archives.

Chile

The first Women’s Library in the country, holds books by, for, and about women and has meeting rooms and study space. It is a Living Library that hopes to generate awareness of equality and women’s rights in Chile.

Czech Republic

JIŘINA ŠIKLOVÁ LIBRARY | Gender Studies library and information center
Library services are available to professionals and to the general public alike. Our specialized collections offer books on equal opportunities for women and men in the job market, in the family and in the society, and literature on feminism, gender studies, the history of the women’s movement, women’s and men’s studies, violence against women, and on social sciences in general. The collections also include poetry and fiction books, periodicals and gray literature (studies, reports, analyses, conference proceedings or annual reports) in Czech, English and German languages. Finally, it offers the latest expert publications in the field for loan. Boasting almost 10,000 volumes, the Gender Studies Library in Prague is currently the largest establishment of its kind in Central and Eastern Europe.

Denmark

The Danish Peace Academy – Greenham Common Peace Camps Songbooks
The women’s peace camps at Greenham Common nuclear base is history now; but their methods of non-violent direct action and the weapons they protested against are not. A generation later women are still protesting at military bases.

Kvinfos Bibliotek, Denmark
Danish centre for study of issues relating to gender, equality and diversity, recently merged with the Royal Library.

Women’s Museum, Denmark
A history museum dedicated to the cultural history of women in Denmark, housed in the former city hall and police station in Aarhus, from 1857.

Egypt

Women & Memory Forum, Egypt
Includes a library and documentation center, comprising of a physical and online library, films, private collections, new acquisitions, pioneers’ biographies, and part of the The Egyptian Universities Library Consortium.

Finland

Ivana Armanini, Finland
Ivana Armanini is a comic artist and illustrator but her website also includes a substantial library of books, zines, comics and other such contributions.

France

Archives du féminisme
This association works to collect the private archives of activists and feminist associations and the archives concerning the cause of women with the longer purpose of saving them, classifying them, and making them available for research.

Bibliotheque Marguerite Durand, France
Created from a massive collection started in 1897 by journalist and activist Marguerite Durand. It holds a collection of materials on French feminism and the struggle of French suffragettes for equality.

Bibliothèque Universitaire d’Angers, France
University of Angers library hosts the Centre des Archives du Féminisme (Feminist archives Center), the main repository for French contemponary feminist archives in France, which work in collaboration with Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand and the Association Archives du Féminisme.

Germany

DDF – Digital Women’s Archive, Germany
Germany’s Digital Women’s Archive – Digitales Deutsches Frauenarchiv – is a specialist digital archive on the history of the German women’s movement.

Frauenkultur
An online resource archive for second wave feminist texts written between 1965-1995.

Frauenmuseum Bonn, Germany
The Bonn Women’s Museum was founded in 1981 by Marianne Pitzen and an interdisciplinary group of working women, and claims to be the first museum of its kind in the world. It hosts temporary exhibitions and accompanying events, and is run by the “Women’s Museum – Art, Culture, Research” society.

GenderOpen, Germany
First worldwide repository for gender studies and gender research.

Girl Museum, Germany
It is the first museum in the world dedicated to girlhood. A virtual museum for exhibitions, education, and raising awareness about girls and girlhood globally, as well as an information platform for social/cultural dialogue and investigation. They research and collect cross-cultural historic and contemporary images and stories from and about girlhood around the world. Through exhibitions, publications, and projects, they explore and document the unique experience of being born and growing up female.

‘Women in One World. Center for Intercultural Research on Women’s Everyday Lives and International Exchange’, the association that runs the Museum Women’s Culture Regional – International, was founded in 1989 by researchers, artists and educators of different native languages as an interdisciplinary forum for cross-cultural studies and international solidarity. They describe and analyse processes that affect women in a specific way, point out disparities, but at the same time, open new perspectives for possible action. They narrate global developments as they are reflected in biographies of women who communicate and are crossing borders.

Schwules Museum, Germany
The gay museum in Berlin was first set up as a one-off exhibition in 1984, and the first exhibition in the Schwules Museum opened in 1986. It includes library & archival collections, as well as events & exhibitions.

She Said Books, Germany
She Said Books is a bookshop for female and queer authors on Kottbusser Damm 79, Berlin.

Greece

Feminist Autonomous Centre for Research
A space for learning, reflection, collaboration, support, exchange, knowledge production, political interventions, and trouble-making.  Working across and against nation-state and continental borders, disciplinary boundaries, and institutional barriers, FAC Research return to the feminist roots of autonomous knowledge production, challenging what counts as legitimate knowledge and who is granted the right to produce and receive it.

Iceland

Konubokastofa
Women’s Book Lounge and Museum about Icelandic women writers. The goal of the Women’s Library is to preserve the writings that Icelandic women have written throughout time. At the same time, the museum’s goal is to make its works accessible so that everyone can come and learn about them and their authors.

India

Dalit Feminism Archive – Feminism In India
Feminism In India is an award-winning digital intersectional feminist media organisation to learn, educate and develop a feminist sensibility among the youth. It is required to unravel the F-word and demystify the negativity surrounding it. FII amplifies the voices of women and marginalised communities using tools of art, media, culture, technology and community.

Sister Library, India
Currently fundraising for a home for what has so far been a pop-up library in Mumbai, India.

International

International Federation for Research in Women’s History
Its aim is to encourage and coordinate research in all aspects of women’s history at international level, by promoting exchange of information and publication and by arranging and assisting in arranging large-scale international conferences as well as more restricted and specialized meetings.

Queer Archives Institute
Queer Archives Institute is a non-profit artist-run organisation dedicated to research, collection, digitalisation, presentation, exhibition, analysis and artistic interpretation of queer archives, with special focus on Central and Eastern Europe.

*WINE – Women’s Information Network Europe
A European network of libraries, archives, information centres and web portals specialising in gender, feminist and women’s research.

Iraq

Kurdish Women’s Library, Archive and Research Center
Kurdish women in Suleymaniyah, Kurdistan Region of Iraq, have developed a new library and archive project. The “Kurdish Women’s Library, Archive and Research Center” is still in the process of founding. They had rooms and wanted to open this 8th  March, but unfortunately, one of the founding members Nagihan Akarsel was assassinated by Turkish secret service on 4th October 2022 in the street on her way to the library. Nagihan was a fierce advocate for women’s rights, a feminist and a human rights defender. Now the library is looking for new, more secure rooms. Still they plan to open this year (2023). The Kurdish Women’s Library, Archive and Research Center is interested in any international connection, exchange and support. They can be contacted here – kurdishwomanlibrary@gmail.com (still awaiting website).

Israel

Haifa Feminist Institute, Israel
HFI hosts the first, the largest and the only feminist archive and library collection in Israel. Their mission is to collect and document the history of feminist activism in Israel from 1970 to the present, to make women’s social and political contribution visible and to inspire future generations. Founded in 2007, the archive hosts thousands of documents in 147 collections, including a wide variety of materials: personal and organizational archives of Israeli women’s groups and organizations, conference papers, dissertations, books, oral histories, media excerpts and feminist journals, as well as a visual collection comprised of leaflets, photographs, video and audio tapes, posters and unique artistic materials.

Italy

Archivio donne in Piemonte, Italy
Seeks to conserve and maintain women’s history and memory, as well as the women’s/feminist movement in the Piedmont region – both the national and international dimension.

Biblioteca Delle Donne, Italy
Situated in Bologna, Italy, the Italian Women’s Library was born at the end of the Seventies as part of Women’s Documentation, Research and Initiative Centre, thanks to a project originated by Associazione Orlando – an independent feminist organisation – which wished to create an institution devoted to women’s culture and political activism.

Casa della donna di Pisa, Italy
Women’s centre and a library, in Pisa. Collection of almost 100 Italian magazines and 6,000 volumes of non-fiction literature.

Casa Internazionale delle Donne
The International House of Women is an autonomous body responsible for enhancing women’s policy, offering services and advice, and includes a restaurant, an organizational secretariat, a guest house, a convention centre, and, of course, a library & archive.

Centro documentazione della donna di Modena, Italy
Women’s documentation centre, Modena. It promotes research, organises conferences, exhibitions and debates as well as training courses and seminars for teachers and many other activities on school to disseminate gender awareness.

Fondazione Evira Baldracco, Italy
An archive and a library, with a mission to promote the studies of women’s culture, and women’s social and political experience, with specific attention to women’s historical associations and feminism. Includes a film archive.

Frauenmuseum Meran / Museo della Donne Merano, Italy
The Women’s Museum in Merano’s permanent exhibition focuses on the cultural and everyday history from a female perspective and the representation of women’s ideals and role models from the 19th century to the present day, through dresses, accessories, everyday objects, books and documents. They also host temporary exhibitions, as well as publishing.

Herstory, Italy
Online archive of feminist groups and collectives in Rome and Lazio from the 70s until today.

Libreria delle donne di Milano, Italy
Feminist bookshop in Milan. It is also a place of historical importance to feminism in Italy and a publisher of women’s magazine, Via Dogana.

Rete Lilith, Italy
Database of Italian women’s libraries and archives.

Women’s Documentation Centre, Italy
Or Centro Documentazione Donna, Ferrara – one of the longest-established Italian women’s centres. Its main activity is the management of a library and a general newspaper library. Also home to a feminist choir.

Japan

Gender Research Library, Nagoya University Japan
Gender Research Library (GRL）, Nagoya University, was founded in 2017 for the purpose of the general advance in the gender research. GRL is the first university library in Japan that specializes in feminism and gender research.

Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace, Japan
A place where the reality of war crimes is recorded and kept for posterity – to remember historical facts about “comfort women,” and to listen to their stories, and to raise our voices and say, “Never Again, anywhere in the world.”

Lithuania

New Generation of Women’s Initiatives (ngoWI) is a non-governmental non-profit feminist organization founded by and for young women in Vilnius (Lithuania). One of its main objectives is described as exchange and dissemination of information on feminist, women’s and gender issues.

Mexico

Feminist library, Mexico
New project, in Chiapas, Mexico. Working with both academics and indigenous women activists to create a truly intersectional resource on and for feminists. Still awaiting website.

Nepal

Feminist Memory Project, Nepal
The Feminist Memory Project, run from the Nepal Picture Library, is working to create a large repository of materials about Nepali women’s struggles and achievements. Through the project, they expect to broaden NPL’s goals of enabling more inclusive versions of Nepali history as well as generating critical conversations about visual culture.

Junkiri Feminist Library, Nepal
Created by Voices of Women Media’, Junkiri is a new initiative and will be the first of its kind in Nepal: a permanent space dedicated specifically to feminist and women-centered literature and ideas.

The Netherlands

Atria – Institute on Gender Equality and Women’s History, Netherlands
Based in Amsterdam, Netherlands, it collects, stores and documents material about the position of women in all fields – such as law, politics, labor, care, history, art, literature, science, religion, sexuality, gender equality and feminism, in the past and the present, from within and abroad.

Poland

Bunt Kobiet, Poland
An online archive of the feminist movement in Poland.

Feminoteka, Poland
Feminist publisher, bookshop and foundation in Warsaw, Poland, fighting to end discrimination against women.

Fundacja Q, Poland
The first ever queer history and culture museum in Poland (online).

Spain

Biblioteca de Mejeres, Spain
The BdM’s collection consists of approx. 25.000 volumes, and also magazines, comics, posters, badges, and stamps. It includes some works from the XIX century and the first third of the XXth century which are out of print today, and which were purchased in antique dealers in Used & Rare Bookshops and The Rastro street market.

Sweden

KvinnSam, Sweden’s National Resource Library for Gender Studies
KvinnSam is a library and archive and previously focused specifically on women’s history (the archives house lots of material from the suffrage movement) and has more recently broadened its focus to gender studies. They are a part of the Gothenburg University Library system.

Saqmi, Sweden
The Swedish Archive for Queer Moving Images.

Turkey

The Women’s Library and Information Centre Foundation (WLICF), Turkey
The first and only women-centred library and archive in Istanbul, Turkey. It was opened to the public in 1990. The collections of the Women’s Library in Istanbul are organised in sixteen main sections: Women’s Private Papers, Women’s Oral History, Women’s Organizations, Ephemera, Women Writers, Women Artists, Visual Documents, Audio Material, Posters, Art Collections, Newspaper Clippings, Books, Periodicals, Rare Material, Thesis-Dissertations and Articles.

Women’s Museum Istanbul
The raison d’etre of Women’s Museum Istanbul is to create a place to honour and inform, in order to keep the history of women up to date and to make a contribution to women’s memory. The permanent exhibition focuses on the biographies of women who have broken new ground in the artistic and cultural life of Istanbul. Temporary exhibitions in Women’s Museum Istanbul could cover any subject that is a part of Istanbul’s women’s memory.

USA

Arizona Queer Archives
The Arizona Queer Archives (AQA) is the state of Arizona’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex (LGBTQI) collecting archives and research initiative of the Institute for LGBT Studies at the University of Arizona.

Black Art Library
First started as a Black History Month experiment where Asmaa Walton would post the covers of anthologies, art books, exhibition catalogues, and monographs from Black visual culture, the idea expanded quite quickly as interest grew. Now fundraising to make it a physical space where people can enjoy Black visual culture.

Black Lesbian Archives, USA
The Archives for Black Lesbians to build Community, Educate & Preserve our Culture.

The Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS), located at the City University of New York, Graduate Center, was founded in 1991 and is the first university-based research center in the United States dedicated to the study of historical, cultural, and political issues of vital concern to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals and communities.

The Chisholm Project, US
Inspired by Shirley Chisholm, it is a collection of materials on women’s activism in Brooklyn since 1945 until the present. Physical collections can be found at the Brooklyn College Archives & Special Collections.

Digital Feminist Archives, US
Based at Barnard Center for Research on Women, it offers a snapshot of feminist history in the 1960s and 1970s, the institutionalization of women’s centers and women’s studies as an academic discipline, and feminist struggles taking place at colleges and universities, in healthcare and social service centers, in political organizations and neighbourhood meetings across the US.

Equality Archive
Equality Archive is an ongoing collaborative project that brings together knowledge from feminist scholars, artists and writers.

Emma Goldman Papers Project, USA
The EGP project is part of a national initiative to retrieve the papers of individuals whose life work has had a lasting impact on the course of American history. Since 1980, the EGP project has collected, organized, and edited tens of thousands of documents from around the world by and about Emma Goldman (1869-1940), a leading figure in American anarchism, feminism, and radicalism.

Gal’s Guide, Indiana, USA
Gal’s Guide mission is to provide an independent women’s history library to preserve, collect, share and champion women’s achievements and lessons learned.

Feminist Library on Wheels (FLOW), Los Angeles
F.L.O.W. is a free mobile lending library of donated books, founded in July 2014. Their mission is to celebrate and promote feminist works, and move them among communities to center marginalized voices and experiences. F.L.O.W. joyfully empowers people to find tools for liberation, making feminism accessible to all.

Friedman Feminist Press Collection, USA
Friedman Feminist Press Collection was established in 2013 to encourage students and scholars to read and study books published by feminist presses that were integral to the development of feminist movement but may no longer be in print.

GLBT Historical Society Museum & Archives, USA
Founded in 1985, the GLBT Historical Society is recognized internationally as a leader in the field of LGBTQ public history. Their operations are centered around two sites: the GLBT Historical Society Museum, located since 2011 in the heart of San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood; and the Dr. John P. De Cecco Archives and Research Center, open to researchers in the Mid-Market district.

International Museum of Women, USA
The International Museum of Women, headquartered in San Francisco, California, is an online museum that covers women’s issues worldwide. Since March 2014 it has been part of the Global Fund for Women.

Jewish Women’s Archive, USA
A national organization dedicated to collecting and promoting the extraordinary stories of Jewish women. JWA explores the past as a framework for understanding the issues important to women today; inspires young people with remarkable role models; and uses Jewish women’s stories to excite people to see themselves as agents of change. Their website is the world’s largest collection of information on Jewish women.

Lesbian Herstory Archives, USA
The Lesbian Herstory Archives is home to the world’s largest collection of materials by and about lesbians and their communities. It’s located in Brooklyn.

Lesbian Home Movie Archive
The Lesbian Home Movie Archive preserves, digitizes, and documents as much amateur film and tape made by lesbians or depicting lesbian lives as possible.  In return for the original media and help documenting collections, the Project offers donors digital copies of their collections and shares rights during their lifetimes. The collection now includes over 500 films and tapes from all over the United States.

Leslie Lohman LGBT Art Museum, USA
The Leslie-Lohman Museum is a dynamic and safe space where the LGBTQ community and its allies engage in meaningful and authentic art experiences that foster empowerment and community building. Includes collections of images, archives, objects and library collections.

Telling the stories of women who transformed the nation, through a growing state-of-the-art online presence and a future physical museum to educate, inspire, empower, shape the future, and provide a complete view of American history.

ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives, USA
The largest repository of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ) materials in the world. Founded in 1952, ONE Archives currently houses over two million archival items including periodicals, books, film, video and audio recordings, photographs, artworks, organizational records, and personal papers.

Schlesinger Library, USA
The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America documents the lives of women of the past and present for the future and furthers the Radcliffe Institute’s commitment to women, gender, and society.

Stonewall National Museum and Archives, USA
The SNMA is one of the largest gay archives and libraries in the United States, founded in 1972. It presents an ongoing 12-month schedule of exhibitions on LGBTQ themes and public programs, including author presentations, films, panel discussions, and collaborative events at its museum and library in South Florida and in cities across the United States.

Tee A. Corinne papers, USA
Tee A. Corinne (1943-2006) was a photographer, artist, writer, and lesbian activist. The collection includes correspondence, literary manuscripts, artwork, photographs, artifacts, and other documents that reflect Corinne’s life and work (1966-2003 (inclusive)). *A substantial group of additional materials was donated at Corinne’s death, in August of 2006, and is now being processed.*

West Virginia Feminist Activist Collection
The West Virginia & Regional History Center is developing the WV Feminist Activist Collection to capture the voices and stories of native and transplanted West Virginians who have worked to affirm the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes.

Vanuatu

Vanuatu Feminist Library, Vanuatu
A library of feminist books, from beginner level, for residents of Vanuatu to read.