We have already had a whirl wind time, with a visit from Nicola Sturgeon MSP (Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Health & Wellbeing) to launch ‘A Way With Words’, the new publication of poems, stories and artworks from Glasgow Women’s Aid.

Nicola Sturgeon visiting GWL today

As I write, over 60 women are here at the launch, listening to these stories – all written by women who have lived with and left abusers, and being read in public today.

From here in the office I can hear much applause and collective laughter, and the Library is filled with support, empathy, pride and respect. I love days like this at GWL. A reminder of who we are and why our work is important.

The book is truly amazing and inspiring – congratulations to our sisters at Glasgow Women’s Aid, it’s a pleasure to be launching ‘A Way With Words’ here at GWL.

‘Women are strong, we have the strength to overcome’ says part of one art work.

Ain’t that the truth.

Nicola Sturgeon supports 'Women on the Shelf' with the GWL staff team

The entire collection, which is currently being catalogued by our newly appointed Archivist, will be fully accessible in a dedicated archive so that it will be preserved for generations to come, housed in the best environmental conditions and in premises of excellence.

GWL needs to raise in excess of £1 million for the overall refurbishment and is a quarter of the way there. But we need your help!

As well as our Women on the Shelf campaign, we are now delighted to launch Lesbians on the Shelf as part of our fundraising initiatives for the Mitchell Library refurbishment.

Lesbians on the Shelf has been formally launched through the new edition of DIVA magazine, with a specially commissioned story by the award winning writer, Zoe Strachan. ‘Strange Desires’ is Zoe’s homage to the lesbian pulp fiction novel and we hope you enjoy it. (Zoe talks about the inspiration behind the story on her blog)

You can help to preserve the future of the Lesbian Archives by joining the Lesbians on the Shelf fundraising campaign.

For just £10 you can sponsor a book from the collection – including such classics as Stranger on Lesbos and Women’s Barracks – or for £100 you can sponsor a shelf and dedicate it to the woman of your choice as a unique Christmas gift and a lovely and lasting tribute.

We need your support! So put a Lesbian on the Shelf today!

Thank you to Zoe and to DIVA Magazine.

Volunteer tasks description:

Supporting the management of the Women on the Shelf Fundraising initiative. This is a new initiative designed to raise essential funds towards our Mitchell Library refurbishment and we need as many people and organisations as possible to invest in and support us.

It involves 3 levels of sponsorship:

• For £100 anyone can sponsor a shelf and dedicate it to a woman of your choice.
• For £1,000 an organisation, group, business or corporate supporter can sponsor a complete library section. The Library aims to have over 100 sections reflecting a range of issues focussing on women and we are looking for major donors to be our partners.
• For £10 you can sponsor an individual book by a woman.

Tasks will include:

• Registering donors on WotS database
• Inputting new contacts into the WotS database
• Managing the WotS database
• Finding avenues to promote WotS scheme to wider network
• Researching organisations for sponsoring sections of library
• Researching funding for producing gift certificates, WotS packs, plaques, publicity, design work and printing
• Updating GWL website with dedication information (i.e. Shelf, Book, Section)
• Updating thank you book with donors

Essential skills and qualities required:

• Confidence with computer programmes, in particular Microsoft Access or similar
• Database entry experience
• Database management experience would be beneficial
• Some Web experience would be beneficial
• Confident and friendly telephone manner
• Fundraising experience would be beneficial
• Researching experience would be beneficial
• Capable of working independently
• Eagerness to learn
• Willingness to adapt (e.g. GWL is a busy working environment with no dedicated reception staff, all staff currently share in tasks including welcoming learners, keeping the space tidy and answering the phone)

If you are interested in this Volunteer Post, please download and fill in the GWL Volunteer Application Form and send the completed form back to: Glasgow Women’s Library, 2nd Floor, 81 Parnie Street, Glasgow, G1 5RH.

Twenty nine people attended and a further twenty three sent their apologies.

Dorothy McLelland, Chair of the GWL Board of Directors, outlined another exciting and successful year for GWL, reporting that in our core activities, we saw the consolidation and further development of the projects that form the heart of our work: the Lifelong Learning Programme, Adult Literacy and Numeracy Project and Black and Minority Ethnic Women’s Project.

Learning at GWL

The Lifelong Learning Programme, with its continuing key themes of Living Histories and Active Citizenship, is as innovative and popular as ever, directed by Adele Patrick and supported by Laura Dolan. In the last year we saw an increase in direct learners to 747 – an increase of nearly 20% on the previous year, with no increase in our funding! (The cost is a mere £30 per learner over the course of the year).

The work of GWL’s Women Make History project continues to thrive and inspire, with its West End Women’s Heritage Walks once again being sold out at the West End Festival, and delivered to a number of groups and international conference delegates by request.

We also developed a walk on ‘Women and the Abolitionist Movement’, commissioned by the WEA, and have now been commissioned to create a walk on ‘Women and the Merchant City’. A further walk on ‘Women in the Necropolis’ will be developed next year in partnership with the Friends of the Necropolis. The Women Make History volunteers are developing a DVD and continue to work extremely hard on the project, and we would like to thank each one of them, especially Kirsty, Jean, Valaine and Anne.

We offered workplace learning and placement opportunities to 18 women this year from a diverse range of organisations such as Rosemount Lifelong Learning Centre and Strathclyde University.

We are very pleased that such is the success of our Lifelong Learning Project that the Scottish Government is funding GWL until 2011 to start to deliver some aspects at national level – this work will start next year.

The Adult Literacy Project, developed by Kay McKie and Pauline Healy provides one-to-one and group learning to women who want to develop and improve their reading, writing, spelling or number work.

The project worked with 82 learners during the year on individual learning plans designed to ensure that the learners set their own goals and determine how they can make a lasting difference to their own lives.

We are very proud to be one of three finalists short listed for an award in the Student Learning category at the Scottish Further Education Unit Awards for our joint project work with Stow College and the Wayside Homeless Centre, where we have been providing ALN support to learners undertaking an Introduction to Social Care course. At the Awards ceremony on 25th November, we were ‘commended’ in the most competitive category, with over 90 entries submitted to the overall competition.

The BME Project has flourished during the year under the development of Syma Ahmed, working with 357 learners and 14 BME women volunteers. Our partnership with Langside College sees the provision of ESOL (English Speakers of Other Languages) Classes to an additional 90 women per week.

The collection of migrant women’s stories, oral histories, intergenerational studies and reminiscence projects have all been central to our work and other events include film nights, discussions, story telling and performance.

GWL Development

At strategic level, GWL secured further funding from the Scottish Government to enable us to continue to progress GWL’s formal adoption of national status as Scotland’s only Women’s Library and we are working with Museums Galleries Scotland to achieve status as a Recognised Collection of National Significance.

Importantly, this year saw first major funding award towards relocation to the Mitchell Library, in the form of our Heritage Lottery Fund grant.

The GWL Team

It was with great sadness that this year saw the resignation of Val Atkinson from the Board of Directors in order to pursue study at Glasgow School of Art and we would like to thank Val for her input into GWL’s work and wish her every success.

We continue to build a happy, strong and confident GWL team and feel confident that, with the continued involvement of our volunteers, users, learners, supporters and partners, we can realise our vision for the future – we look forward to another exciting, challenging and successful year ahead.

Some latest developments are included in a new issue of GWL News, and the Annual Report will be available in January.

GWL’s Strategic Development Manager, Sue John, updated the meeting on our relocation developments and the necessary remaining formal business was undertaken, with the re-election of the Board and re-appointment of GWL’s Auditors.

Sue John then launched GWL’s new Women on the Shelf initiative and concluded that support for GWL has never been more crucial than at this time as she encouraged everyone to become Friends of GWL and to support our Women on the Shelf initiative.

Refreshments were served as we all enjoyed watching (again!) GWL’s appearance on ‘Reporting Scotland’ in July and saw a presentation of images of the many GWL events from the past year.