Our annual report for 2011-12 is now available to download
From the Directors’ Report:
Welcome to another year in the life of Glasgow Women’s Library. In this Annual Report you will find details of great commitment and achievement, inspiration and delight.
2011 was European Year of the Volunteer and for the first time the Library, through funding from the Voluntary Action Fund, appointed a Volunteer Co-ordinator. GWL was founded by just a few committed volunteers in 1991 and run by them for the first eight years, lovingly laying its foundations. Since then, whilst steadily building a core of paid workers, GWL has continued to be nourished by the hard work and enthusiasm of hundreds of volunteers. As an organisation we achieve way beyond our financial means due to the essential investment people freely make of their time. Volunteering brings benefits to all involved: skills learned and developed, new social contacts made and opportunities to shine and to share. Over the years the Library has been delighted to support many volunteers in their progression to further learning, training and employment.
Members of our Board of Directors are also volunteers. We were sad to see Sue Rawcliffe and Shona Craven leave the Board this year. Their knowledge and enthusiasm have contributed greatly to our work and we wish them health and happiness in their future endeavours. We ran another successful recruitment round and are pleased to welcome Maud Bracke, Angela Gray and Karen Birch to the team. All arrive with ideas, skills and experience relevant to current developments going forward in the Library.
2011 marked our 20th anniversary year and saw the launch of a year-long project due to culminate in our 21st birthday celebrations in September 2012. New works of art and writing inspired by items in GWL’s library, archive and museum collections have recently been commissioned from 21 visual artists and 21 writers in an innovative and ambitious project funded by Creative Scotland and Museums Galleries Scotland. Watch this space!
Our 21st birthday year will perhaps be the most appropriate in which to secure our ‘key to the door’ and dreams of finally grounding our work in a permanent, fit-for-purpose home also took great strides forward in the past year. Working with a Property Agent and supported by Glasgow Life, Glasgow City Council and Clyde Gateway, we were able to thoroughly scope building options across Glasgow. This process deepened the understanding of our needs and desires as an organisation, as well as the benefits we bring to the locations we inhabit. We are very pleased to announce that, as a result of a generous offer by Glasgow Life, we will be moving the beautiful Bridgeton Library in Glasgow’s increasingly vibrant and regenerated East End. Timescales for moving are still to be determined but the entire team is thrilled by this development.
Of course, amidst this excitement, our core work continues to thrive and develop, so please do pop in, sign up to be a borrower or a learner and marvel in the world of knowledge and friendship contained in Glasgow Women’s Library.
Susan Garde Pettie
Chair
Download: GWL Annual Report 2011-12 (pdf)
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