20 September 2021
FLA VOLUNTEERING OPPORTUNITY
In order to expand our work, FLA is seeking volunteers to help with membership and fundraising. We’re looking for people who can volunteer at least 4 hours a month and ideally for a minimum of 6 months. This is an opportunity to develop your skills in fundraising; gain experience working for a grassroots feminist organisation; and meet new people within the archival and library community. Head to our Volunteering opportunities page to find out more.
18 June 2021
*Job opportunity*
Project Archivist needed for the Gertrude Bell collection at Newcastle University Special Collections.
Gertrude Bell (1868 – 1926) was an explorer, archaeologist, and political agent of major significance. As a British expert in the region, she was a key figure in the establishment of the Kingdom of Iraq in 1921. In this centenary year, her archive, a UNESCO Memory of the World Collection consisting of photographs, diaries, letters, and reports, will be fully curated to modern standards for the first time by the successful candidate and a Digitisation Assistant.
The post is fixed term for 18 months. Informal enquiries can be made to Ian Johnson (ian.johnson@ncl.ac.uk). Closing date 2nd July 2021.
14 June 2021
*Volunteer needed*
History of Women’s Liberation (HOWL) are looking for a volunteer Website Designer and Programmer to help them set up a new website! For more information and to apply see here.
7 May 2021
Archive repository needed for the Maria Eitel collection
Maria Eitel was born and raised in Washington state and began her career as a journalist. She served in the George H.W. Bush administration in media affairs, and later worked as an executive at Nike and founded the Nike Foundation. Eitel developed ‘The Girl Effect’ based on the idea that adolescent girls have the unique potential to stop poverty before it starts. In 2007 following the fallout from the Harvey Weinstein scandal and #metoo, Eitel began moderating the first discussions that led to the foundation of Time’s Up. The papers would be of interest to anyone interested in media and journalism, the George H.W. Bush administration, corporate responsibility, development work and women’s studies, immigration, motherhood/sisterhood/being a daughter, and leadership/mentorship/stewardship.
Email ejf@mariaeitel.com for more information or suggestions.
4 May 2021
Upcoming talk:
9 June 2021, 5.30pm-6.45pm – From Punishment to Pride: LGBTQ+ archives at Surrey History Centre, with Di Stiff, Collections Development Archivist & SCC LGBTQ+ Network Ally
Surrey has a rich and remarkable LGBTQ+ history. Join Surrey History Centre to learn more about the Surrey connections of some famous and not-so-famous LGBTQ+ lives, including Dame Ethel Smyth, Edward Carpenter, E.M. Forster, Gwen Farrar and Norah Blaney, Harry Daley, Gwen Lally and Alan Turing, to name just a few. You’ll discover why we raise awareness of this often little-known area of Surrey’s past, hear about some of our LGBTQ+ records and outreach projects, and see how our collections help to reveal important stories from 18th century punishment to 21st century Pride.
Tickets £5.00 Please book a place online. After payment has been received you will be emailed a unique link and password to attend the talk on Zoom.
30 April 2021
*The Glasgow Women’s Library are recruiting 2 x Administration and Project Workers*
26 April 2021
Upcoming Women’s and Gender History talks from the Institute of Historical Research
Monday, 26 April 2021, 5:30PM – 7:00PM
Stella Dadzie, A Kick in the Belly: Women, Slavery & Resistance
Monday, 26 April 2021, 5:30PM – 6:30PM
Christy Pichichero (George Mason University), Race, Gender, and Docile Bodies in Eighteenth-Century France
Sarah Dunstan (QMUL), Daniel Lee (QMUL), ‘Race, Rights and Reform: Black activism in the French Empire and the United States from World War I to the Cold War’
Tuesday 27 April 2021, 5.30pm-7.00pm
Chandra Sekhar (Sri Avarinda Sathajanthi College), Dalit Women and Missionary Christianity: Telegu Bible Women as Teachers of Wisdom
Tuesday 27 April, 8.00pm-9.30pm
‘Packed with Potential’: Anne Lister of Shibden Hall (1791-1840)
‘Young Historians Project’: the hidden history of African women in British healthcare during the 20th century
Wednesday 28 April 2021, 5.15pm-7.00pm
Lauren Jannette (George Washington University), From Grieving Pietas to Enraged Crusaders: The Evolving Narrative of Women in French Anti-War Propaganda (1919-1939)
Thursday, 29 April 2021, 5:15PM – 7:00PM
Kirstin Barnard (York), Neighbourliness in Later Medieval London
12 March 2021
Upcoming talks and seminars
Wednesday, 14 April 2021, 2.30-3.30PM
Dr Anne Logan (University of Kent, emerita): ‘I grumbled a little at the absolutely endless catechism about Elizabeth Fry’: Margery Fry and Quakerism, Friends of the Womens Library
12th January – 1st June
Women in Antiquity: Women Disrupting the Patriarchy (a series of short talks). Details can be found here.
9 February 2021
New exhibition, Making Modern Women: Women’s Magazines in Interwar Britain, and associated events, by LSE Library.
5 February 2021
Launch of Velvet Fist archive at Bishopsgate Library – Velvet Fist was a socialist feminist women’s acapella choir active in London 1983 to 2013. They sang songs of resistance and solidarity in support of struggles in the UK and beyond.
25 January 2021
Upcoming Women’s and Gender History talks from the Institute of Historical Research
22 January 2021
#WakingTheFeminists archive to be held at the National Library of Ireland and the National Museum of Ireland.
18 January 2021
*Spare Rib no longer available online – details on the British Library website.
The North East Wales archive has been rolling out its ‘Women Rediscovered’ program. During #ExploreYourArchive week this archive filmed a series of programmes highlighting women’s stories from their archive. Each monday in January a new video is released on their youtube channel.
The Newington Green Alliance
Every week between 27 January 2021 and 3 March 2021 the Newington Green Alliance is hosting a series of talks (Herstories) about key events in women’s history in Britain. Speakers include: Lola Olufemi, Pragna Patel (Southall Black Sisters Director), Anna Birch (Director of Fragments and Monuments), Lil Warren (Director of Unity Arts), Angela Neustatter, Harini Iyengar (Women’s Equality Party), Rose Lewis (Sistah Space).
Sign up and donations via eventbrite.
15 January 2021
The Friend’s of the Women’s Library have lots of exciting talks coming up! Dates for your diary include:
Wednesday 20 January at 2.30pm
Lucienne Boyce: “Is this story true?”: History in Fact and Fiction
Wednesday 17 February 2021, 2.30pm
Amy Kaufman, Head Law Librarian at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada: ‘Women Writing Women’s Rights: The Beginnings of Women’s Law Books in England, from Married Women’s Property Reform to Suffrage’
Wednesday 17 March 2021, 2.30 pm
Dr Eleanor Reed, Project Officer for ‘Time and Tide: Connections and Legacies’ at Nottingham Trent University: Making Homemakers: how Woman’s Weekly shaped lower-middle-class domestic culture in Britain, 1918-1958.
Wednesday 14 April 2021, 2.30pm
Anne Logan, Emeritus Reader at the University of Kent, and biographer of Margery Fry (The Politics of Penal Reform: Margery Fry and the Howard League): ‘I grumbled a little at the absolutely endless catechism about Elizabeth Fry’: Margery Fry and Quakerism.
12 January 2021
The East End Women’s Museum, due to open in 2021/2022 has launched its ‘Women Make History’ crowdfunder for their brand new premises in Barking. You can donate now via their website.
15th July 2020
On the 2nd July, we organised a first-ever, online FLA meeting! We invited guests from some international libraries & archives, from Armenia (FemLibrary), Austria (VBKOE), and India (SisterLibrary). We were also joined by a new member who recently moved from New Zealand and hails from the Samoa House Library! As well as UK members of the network. We listened to fascinating presentations from our international guests about the amazing work that they do, and then we watched a fascinating documentary about the Austrian archive’s herstory, which you can find here.
You can also catch up on the recording from our meeting here (does not include the film part) and read more updates from all of the feminist libraries & archives present at the meeting here.
27th September 2019
The Vagina Museum is opening in Camden this Autumn! The big opening is on 23rd November, but the Museum will be starting its pre-launch events programme on 5th October, with the first exhibition opening on 16th November!
Find out more about their already packed events programme here.
25th April 2019
HOWL (History of Women’s Liberation) was set up by women who were involved in the second wave of the Women’s Liberation Movement in Britain, with a mission to ensure that their stories are collected and safeguarded. It will launch to the public, for the first time, at the Unfinished Histories & Feminist Library benefit at Conway Hall, 26-27th April (see events for more info).
Watch this space for more info and HOWL website coming up soon.
In other news…
8 days left to support the crowdfunding of the first ever brick & mortar Vagina Museum – opening up in Camden, London, in November 2019, if the campaign is successful! Support it today and be part of making this amazing project happen!
31st March 2019
Feminist Library closes (successfully!) its crowdfunding campaign for a new home. With the help of just over 1,000 supporters, the Library’s team has managed to raise all the money needed to fund the plans to relocate the Library.
Watch this space for more news about the Library’s move and reopening.
2nd March 2019
The Feminist Library and Unfinished Histories have decided to come together to organise a weekend of celebrations of women’s history and creativity. With the 50th anniversary of the first Women’s Liberation Movement groups in the UK, the celebrations will be focusing on feminist film and theatre of that era.
Join the Feminist Library collective and Unfinished Histories to pay homage to the women who came before us, and indeed, meet some of them, as they will be joining us too!
The event will be taking place at Conway Hall, alongside the ongoing exhibition on the Camden feminist movement of the time happening there.
Find out more and book tickets here.
18th Nov 2018
The Feminist Library is crowdfunding for its new home!
Having resided in the same home, in Elephant & Castle, London, for the past 32 years, the Feminist Library is having to relocate. The Library is in conversations about securing a new home with the local Council and has launched a big crowdfunding campaign to raise enough money to be able to afford to move.
Despite years of struggle against eviction, unsustainable rent increases and gentrification, the Library remains independent and autonomous resource, in an effort to keep accessibility at its core. It’s also almost totally volunteer-run. Please support this important resource if you can.
Read more about the campaign and contribute here:
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/help-the-feminist-library-build-its-new-home
20th Dec 2017
BMD has been saved thanks to the great work of the collective in Paris! Find a report here from Ilana Eloit who came to the last FLA meeting to tell us about the campaign.
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We have received the following message and call to action from our sisters in Paris on the 25th Sept 2017:
The Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand (BMD) is in real peril. The Mairie of Paris is refusing to change its mind about its future relocation plans for the BMD, and we must work together now to convince the Mairie to act differently. It is unacceptable for such a historically significant library to disappear. We cannot let the BMD become a dead collection in a general library.
The Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand (BMD), a municipal library of the city of Paris that specializes in the history of women, feminism, and gender, and was founded in 1932 thanks to a gift from the feminist journalist Marguerite Durand, must soon leave the building it has occupied in the 13th arrondissement since 1989 so that the Médiathèque Jean-Pierre Melville can occupy the entire building by itself.
This project could have been the occasion for the Mairie of Paris to propose a new space to the BMD, a larger location that would have more space both for the collections, which have been crowded tightly together in a small space for years now, and for the development of activities such as exhibitions, lectures, debates, pedagogical workshops, and other events. Instead, the Mairie has decided that the BMD is to be housed by the Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris (Historical Library of the City of Paris – BHVP) in the 4th arrondissement. This decision has been taken without any consultation with the staff or the social partners at the BMD. All the syndicats (trade-unions) are opposed to it.
The Mairie de Paris claims that this move will offer the BMD more visibility by virtue of the prestigious character of the BHVP building and its central location in Paris, as well as the presence at the BHVP of the feminist Marie-Louise Bouglé Collection and the George Sand Collection. In fact, however, the BHVP has no more space for its own collections; so this move will thus mean that the collections of the BMD will have to be stored in off-site warehouses in an unspecified location, their delivery will be delayed, the BMD will no longer have its own reading room, and its personnel will effectively be merged with that of the BHVP.
The Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand is the only public library in France that is exclusively dedicated to the history of women, feminism, and gender; it enjoys an international reputation; and it should not be made to become invisible and then disappear.
The new collective “Sauvons la BMD!” (Save the BMD!), which has just been launched by the Archives du féminisme, has been constituted to convince the Mairie de Paris to give up the current relocation project and propose a new home for the library that will offer the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand both a real visibility and worthy conditions of operation.
If you would like to support this collective, we invite you to participate in the actions that we are putting in place:
1. Write to Anne Hidalgo and Bruno Julliard (see a sample letter below) and send the letter to the collective “Sauvons la BMD!” (Save the bMD!) at collectif.sauvonslaBMD@gmail.com so that it can be published online on the collective’s website.
2. Subscribe to the Twitter feed @CollectifBMD
3. Subscribe to the Facebook page.
4. Subscribe to Instagram.
5. Sign and ask others to sign the new petition.
6. Participate in a feminist meeting in front of the BMD on the 18th November (more information coming soon on the blog that we are creating).
7. Help us contact associations and organizations that will officially support the Collectif Sauvons la BMD!
8. Prepare for an 8th March 2018 devoted to the preservation of our feminist memory.
E-mail contact: collectif.sauvonslaBMD@gmail.com
Website.
Sample letter to send
To : Madame la maire de Paris, Anne Hidalgo
Monsieur le premier adjoint, Bruno Julliard, chargé de la Culture
The Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand, a municipal library of the city of Paris that specializes in the history of women, feminism, and gender, and was founded in 1932 thanks to a gift from the feminist journalist Marguerite Durand, must soon leave the building it has occupied in the 13th arrondissement since 1989 so that the Médiathèque Jean-Pierre Melville can occupy the entire building by itself.
This project could have been the occasion for the Mairie of Paris to propose a new space to the BMD, a larger location that would have more space both for the collections, which have been crowded tightly together in a small space for years, and for the development of activities such as exhibitions, lectures, debates, pedagogical workshops, and other events. Instead, the Mairie has decided that the BMD is to be housed by the Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris (BHVP) in the 4th arrondissement. This decision has been taken without any consultation with the staff or the social partners at the BMD. All the syndicats are opposed to it.
The Mairie de Paris claims that this move will offer the BMD more visibility by virtue of the prestigious character of the BHVP building and its central location in Paris, as well as the presence at the BHVP of the feminist Marie-Louise Bouglé Collection and the George Sand Collection. In fact, however, the BHVP has no more space for its own collections; so this move will thus mean that the collections of the BMD will have to be stored in off-site warehouses in an unspecified location, their delivery will be delayed, the BMD will no longer have its own reading room, and its personnel will effectively be pooled with that of the BHVP. Who will still want to give their archives to the BMD in these conditions?
The Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand is the only public library in France that is exclusively dedicated to the history of women, feminism, and gender; it enjoys an international reputation; and it should not be made to become invisible and then disappear, especially not in a city whose mayor so willingly declares herself a feminist.
Together with the collective “Sauvons la BMD!” (Save the BMD!), which has been founded by the Archives du féminisme with the support of all the syndicats concerned, we demand that the Mairie de Paris renounce its current relocation project and propose a new home for the library that will offer the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand both a real visibility and the worthy conditions of operation that will allow for the future expansion and enrichment of its collections.
Addresses to use
Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris (anne.hidalgo@paris.fr)
(with a copy to Sylvie Clavier, Cheffe du Bureau du Courrier de la Maire:
sylvie.clavier@paris.fr)
& Bruno Julliard, Premier Adjoint à la Maire de Paris, Chargé de Culture (bruno.julliard@paris.fr)
Hôtel de Ville de Paris
Place de l’Hôtel de Ville
75196 Paris cedex 04
FLA Network 