This issue include a range of activities across Scotland for International Women’s Day and more Twentieth Anniversary news.

You can download the full programme of events here: What’s On at Glasgow Women’s Library – February to May 2012

You can also pick up a copy of the programme from the library, just pop in and see us Monday to Friday, 9.30am to 4.30pm.  Alternatively you should be able to find a copy in your local Glasgow City Council Library. Let us know if they have run out and we can send them more.

All programme details will be available on our website in the events calendar and printed copies will be distributed around Glasgow. Pop into your local Glasgow City Council Library to pick up your copy (let us know if they have run out as we can send more!) or come in and see us to find out more.

You can keep up to date with all our news and events by joining the library and signing up to the mailing list.  It’s free and we send out monthly emails keeping you informed on the Library related news.

If you have a suggestion on a location or website where you think we should be promoting what’s on at the Library then contact us.

We are looking for volunteers to help with our new Personal History Tours project aimed at  women in Castlemilk and the Gorbals.  This project will support 20 women to create personal history tours in their local area, involving walking and storytelling.

This role will involve:

-meeting women on a one to one basis

- encouraging them to plan a walk in their local area

-supporting them to document 6 landmarks that tells their story

-recording or scribing their stories

Volunteers should have great communication skills, experience or and interest in community work, the ability to motivate and encourage women to talk about themselves, lots of energy and the ability to work of their own initiative!

Days and time are flexible and might change from week to week.  This project will run from January to March 2012.  Volunteering will take place in the Gorbals and Castelmilk so volunteers should be willing to travel; however all travel costs will be covered including any meetings at GWL).

If you are interested or would like more information please get in touch.  We would love to hear from you!

In order to celebrate Contradictory Woolf, The 21st Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf, held at Glasgow University in June 2011, curator Kitty Anderson and artists Anne-Marie Copestake, Kate Davis, Rachel Lowther and Lorna Macintyre developed a new collaborative art project.

Drawing inspiration from a series of reading groups looking at Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, alongside the conference theme, they created a series of limited edition risograph prints and bags, each of which honours a variety of female figures, past and present.

These works are for sale and all the proceeds go to Glasgow Women’s Library’s Women Leading Through Reading programme which supports the development of women’s literacy and communication skills in a range of different communities.

Hand painted and screenprinted canvas bags and limited edition risographs for £15

We are now proud to feature the latest exciting development – a podcast of the walk, available to download for free. The group were keen to make the walk as accessible to as many people as possible, so decided a podcast would be the next step. The podcast was written and recorded by the walk group and other local community members with the help of funding awarded from the Galloway Association.

Kriss Nichol from Wigtown women’s walk group has written a blog post about the experience.

Wigtown walk group members and local residents at the walk's launch in March 2010

Download: Wigtown Women’s Heritage Walk Podcast

Download: Wigtown Women’s Walk Leaflet (PDF)

Told in their own words, the women reveal a fascinating story of hope, isolation, warm welcomes, cold weather, racism and the quest for acceptance and integration. Many of these women have made significant contributions to the Pollokshields community, witnessing major changes along the way.

Featuring a wealth of photographs, the book explores the migrant women’s early lives before coming to Scotland, and charts their feelings and impressions on arrival, and their experiences of education, work and community. It also provides an intimate insight into family, intergenerational differences, and, on a more light-hearted note, of food, fashion, relaxation and celebration.

The story of Pollokshields’ migrant women is one of hope and despair, challenge and success. It is the story of the women who have created and raised a whole generation of ‘new’ Scots. It is therefore part of the ever-intriguing story of Scotland.

Buy She Settles in the Shields for just £9.95*

*not including postage and packing

Inverness GWL/Women at Work conference oral history workshop

My great grandmother the runaway bride

Dundee Bring and Tell oral history session

Sheila Campbell talks about her mother working in the Jute Mills and other memories

I have a degree in Information and Library studies which I got in Greece. Then I went to a couple of other European countries and tried to do other things that didn’t really work out and now I’m here! I hope this will work, I am getting old and I really do like it here!

After coming here I took a post graduate course in Information and Library studies. A friend suggested that it would be good to freshen up my skills increase my employability and boost my confidence, I agreed it was a good advice and I enjoyed my course, the only problem was that two years letter I still didn’t have a library job, according to my interview feedbacks because of my lack of experience in library work.

So I decided to volunteer in one and gain some experience and some confidence and try to convince at least my self that I can really do this even after all this time. So after an email asking for a cataloguing position as a volunteer and an application for a post as finance assistant volunteer, since that was the only volunteering post available at the time (I needed to get near a library fast I was starting to forget everything my postgraduate degree had reminded me again) I started volunteering as a receptionist two days a week!

And it was great! The atmosphere in the library, the people who work, visit, volunteer in it, everything was great, and I was thrilled, for two days a week I had my dream job even if it was a volunteering one, I can do other things to pay my rent as I’d done all these years, at least now I also have something I actually enjoy doing! And the months go by and I don’t even notice that it’s been 6 months already and then one morning a part-time job came up at the library, and I start to thing about it and try to figure out how could I fit two jobs and my volunteering in one week, or if it would be to much I had some serious thinking to do, but then I realised I was being a bit daft, I don’t have to keep volunteering in the library, yes I do enjoy it very much but if I could work in it I’d probably enjoyed it as much if not more.

So I applied for it and I got it! And now I’m in my third week as the part time National Lifelong Learning administrative assistant which I really do enjoy as much, and though I do feel a little lost most of the time for now, with Morag’s guidance and help, and the support that I get from everyone it the library I’m sure I’ll be just fine!

Wish me luck!