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Archives
The Library houses over 500 archives (arranged in 11 strands) that document women's lives and the issues that have concerned and interested them. They date primarily from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day and extend in size from one file to hundreds of boxes.
Included are the personal papers of a wide variety of individuals, ranging from the papers of the famous suffragette Emily Wilding Davison to the papers of 2nd wave feminist Sheila Rowbotham. The records of societies and associations are also covered, including female emigration societies, women's suffrage associations, societies for the abolition of the state regulation of prostitution, societies for the suppression of traffic in persons, women's employment organisations and a myriad of other pressure groups and campaigning organisations on issues as varied as peace, single parenthood, women clergy and home economics. The records of research and oral history projects are also collected.
An online catalogue is available for searching the archives.
Museum Collection
The Library is also an accredited museum. As such the Library is home to rich holdings of banners, badges, photographs, posters, postcards, paintings, prints, textiles and a collection of material culture that reflects some of the central issues that have influenced women's lives during the past two centuries. These diverse objects mix themes ranging from sexual health, in the posters produced by Josephine Butler's campaign against the Contagious Diseases Acts; to art, home crafts, and politics in the suffrage banners used to campaign for the vote; to equality and freedom in posters, badges, and ephemera produced by women's groups over the past thirty years.
An online catalogue is available for searching the museum collection.
Please note: electronic versions of individual Archive and Museum catalogues are available, as text rather than database, by contacting the Reading Room Enquiry Desk.
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