Coming to the end of my placement at the library as part of my MSc in Applied Gender Studies at Strathclyde, I would like to share my experience as a student placement for the 30th anniversary project. For the last few months I have been going through the materials held in the archive about projects organised by Glasgow Women’s Library, creating a subject guide of all the projects in the collection. This is all part of a process of looking back, assessing and remembering the impact of GWL on women’s learning in Glasgow over the past thirty years. The amount of exhibitions, peer projects, reading groups, workshops and other activities held on the premises is impressive – and sometimes overwhelming, opening green archive box after green archive box, I moved through the peaks and valleys of information, at what felt like a snail’s pace.
During my feminist snailhood, it was impossible to escape the reality of record-keeping and archives: it is both an incredibly rewarding and an incredibly mundane task to filter, sort through and read a mountain of records. Yet how else can we hold onto memory? Every pamphlet and correspondence – at first, fax and letters which then gradually turned into printed out e-mail threads – were put into the archive with the intention of being important to hold on to. Looking at it from the other side, with the task of categorising, then often feels like a puzzle-solving experience. Aside from the classic frustrations of “what is this newspaper clipping from 1989 doing in this box about a 2001 exhibition?” and “why is there no date on this!” There was also the satisfaction of getting to grips with the inner workings of the Glasgow Women’s Library.
The 30th anniversary project is important because it facilitates taking stock of the achievements of GWL. My work has contributed to having an overview of projects which lay un-catalogued in the stores for decades. I get the sense that it can be easier to work on external projects while wrapped up in the everyday structures of the organisation one is in. So, getting to finally synthesise the projects created by GWL has felt like an achievement in itself; a big deal for a mere shelled gastropod if you ask me.
There is also the wider ecosystem of Glasgow Women’s Library to become a part of when spending any time here. The approach of allowing easy access to archive materials means that researchers are always coming in and out, and there is more to be involved in than simply the placement. The library is a space of possibility, predicated on feminist values – and the atmosphere, friendliness and openness of the staff all reflect that.
In the age of the internet, having access to physical materials gives a sense of physicality to history. Going through the past 30 years at a glance, there is a lot more material available about projects from the 90s than now: it is possible to get a sense of the organisers’ processes, considerations, and even personal lives and friendships through correspondence. Another key take-away is the bravery with which the library has created counter-cultural events: notably, when gathering information against Section 28 through the Poverty Study. The latter was a series of interviews and questionnaires documenting the impact of homophobia on the lives of lesbians and gay men in Glasgow. There are too many projects to speak of here in detail, as there were over 50 boxes/files to go through, but what is clear is that Glasgow Women’s Library has had an immeasurable impact on fostering women’s culture, history and spirit.
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