Showing 4 results

The archive consists of the organisation's archives and Maternity Alliance publications. It includes Annual Reports and Accounts, the papers for the Annual General Meetings, the Minutes of the Executive and Management Committees and the papers of the working parties and subcommittees that reported to them, a complete set of the MA monthly newsletter, MA publications (including reports, fact-sheets, training notes, booklets and books), Directors' working papers (Christine Gowdridge), press cuttings, posters, a MA clock, an award.

The records reflect the organisation's work in:

• Education (this includes educating employers and individuals of what was existing legal provision for maternity, but also education related to campaigning to reduce inequality in maternity provision, including lobbying government and trade unions for key changes in maternity provision);

• Research into and support for specific groups (ethnic minorities; travellers; teenagers; asylum seekers; disabled etc);

• Publications: Creating publications to support the above work;

• Training: Creating published training resources and providing training sessions for those who worked with target communities (i.e. those who worked with parents on rights and benefits such as the DSS; Social workers; Advice groups and charities);

• Policy and Project Work (such as a Teenage Pregnancy Project which included a resource and training pack);

• Advisory Services (through the web site; through key publications; and through the Advice Line);

• Conferences (particularly research based courses to highlight specific campaigns).

As at Jan 2009, The Women's Library held approximately 1050 posters in the Museum Collection, with c 100 posters identified in the archives.

The earliest posters held result from suffrage activities and can be divided into three main groups; advertisements for meetings and events, illustrated propaganda posters arguing why women should get the vote, and thirdly newspaper bills bearing suffrage related headlines, used to promote paper sales.

All other posters are arranged by subject and date from the 1970s to the present day. The collection represents a mixture of women's campaigning, campaigning by organisations to promote gender equality, and posters produced to advertise women-focused events and publications. There are a small number of posters that portray women's issues and campaign work internationally. The work of The Equal Opportunities Commission in England and Ireland is particularly well represented as a result of a large donation of their obsolete posters during the 1990s. Also well represented with almost 80 posters is the work of See Red Women's Workshop, a women's liberation screen-printing collective (1974-1984).

The catalogued Pamphlet Collection comprises over 12,000 titles dating from approximately 1830 to the present. The Pamphlet Collection consists of printed material less than 60 pages in length and includes government policies, reports, annual reports and campaigning material, primary law, including Bills and Acts. The subject material of the collection reflects and enriches the wide range of topics held elsewhere in the Women's Library.The topics covered include: English fiction, children's stories, poetry, women's organisations, feminism, role of women in society - UK and abroad, nursing, sex discrimination law, divorce law, employment, occupations, careers, equal opportunities, labour law, pension law, social security, taxation, housing, health, pregnancy, abortion, birth control, domestic violence, mothers, one-parent families, children, family life, housekeeping, religion, ordination, arts, costume, suffrage. Organisations include Equal Opportunities Commission, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital, National Union of Suffragettes, National Society for Women's Suffrage, US Women's Bureau, American National Red Cross, Union of Jewish Women, National Union of Townswomen's Guilds, National Federation of Women's Institutes, Fawcett Society, National Council for the Unmarried Mother and Her Child, British Federation of University Women, Association of University Women Teachers, Divorce Law Reform Union. Most of the material is in English, but there are also pamphlets in other languages, such as Italian, German and French.The pamphlets are arranged in two sections - one for standard sized pamphlets and one for oversized pamphlets.

The 'UDC Pamphlet Collection' [Universal Dewey Decimal Classification]: In addition to the main Pamphlet Collection is the 'UDC Pamphlet Collection.' The UDC collection was the first pamphlet collection created by the Library and consists of approximately 10,000 pamphlets dating from mid nineteenth to mid twentieth centuries, covering all subjects. As the collection was gradually acquired during the Library's first 20 years of life, it was arranged by subject, using the Universal Decimal Classification system. The pamphlets were primarily deposited by organisations and individuals, although some purchases were made. There is a finding aid kept with the collection but the collection was never catalogued and therefore remained a hidden resource within the Library for more than 80 years. Unsurprisingly other libraries did not collect most of these pamphlets. In 2007 as part of a cataloguing funding bid preliminary sampling of the collection against Copac (the merged online catalogues of 24 university research libraries in the UK, plus the British Library and the National Library of Scotland) found that over 60% of the UDC pamphlets were not listed in these major research collections. This is a very significant level of unique printed material.Cataloguing of the UDC collection started in 2007 and as the pamphlets are catatogued, they are transferred to the main pamphlet collection described above. As at 2009 the collection was partially catalogued and The Library was seeking additional funds to complete the project.

The archive consists of minute books of the Society for the Overseas Settlement of British Women (SOSBW) Council, executive, finance and various committees and of Junior branch, training centre, Africa, Rhodesia, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and schoolgirl tours subcommittees; minutes of the Overseas Settlement Committee and War Services Committee; duplicate minutes for meetings of Joint Council for Women's Emigration Societies; annual reports; title deeds and legal documents; Legal, finance and hostel correspondence files; general correspondence files; pamphlets; Overseas Settlement Committee annual reports and Overseas Settlement Board reports.