Our History

Archive material displayed on a table titled the Women in Profile September 1990 events alongside conference RSVPs and the Women in Profile film festival programme.

Three Decades of Changing Minds: Project archivist Mae Moss blogs about her first month

Hello everyone!   I’ve been working on the 30th anniversary project for just over 8 weeks now and what a ride it’s been! Having volunteered and worked with Glasgow Women’s Library […]

Shelves and tables in the 109 Trongate premises, 1990s

Three Decades of Changing Minds: Marking 30 Years of Glasgow Women’s Library

Glasgow Women’s Library is thrilled to be the recipient of a grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund for a two year project to interpret, safeguard and share our own 30-year heritage, and enable us to ‘look back to move forward’.

Glasgow Women's Library's first location on Hill Street

Join the GWL Team

We are seeking two new team members, a Project Coordinator and a Project Archivist, to help take forward Three Decades of Changing Minds: Marking 30 Years of Glasgow Women’s Library

Old photograph of a shop front in Garnethil with a a sign reading Women's Library in uneven text

GWL at 30

On this day in 1991, in a draughty little shopfront in Garnethill, Glasgow Women’s Library opened its doors for the first time. Now happily settled in our permanent home in Bridgeton, we are taking time over this anniversary year to ‘look back to move forward’.

GWL- The Library for the Modern Woman

After our whirlwind tour through the history of the Bridgeton Public Library, I think that the main take away from its story is that no matter what year we are […]

A Library for Modern Bridgeton?

Whilst we have seen how the establishment of the library benefited the women of industrialising Bridgeton, how did the library modernise? In this blog post, we explore how in the […]

The Library as an Arena for Self-Expression

‘The main consideration should be to help those who will help themselves; to provide part of the means by which those who desire to improve may do so; to give […]

The Women of Industrialising Bridgeton

In our discourse on what it meant to be a woman during the period of industrialisation, we often find it hard to move beyond the idea of the woman in […]

The Origin of the Public Library

Before we can explore the history of the Bridgeton Public Library, it is first important to understand the processes through which Carnegie granted money for the establishment of these libraries, […]

Carnegie’s Libraries in Scotland: The History of the Bridgeton Public Library

‘From Scotland’s heather-covered braes, In Babyhood he came, And early fixed his childish gaze, On lucre and on fame…// So skilfully he flew his kite, That wondrous was his luck; […]