The Women's Library

The history of the Museum Collection as a discrete collection within The Women's Library is less easy to trace than the Archive and Printed Collections. Fawcett Library members and related organisations often deposited objects with the Library, either as part of personal and organisational archives or as individual 'iconic' items. This ad-hoc collection continued after the transfer of the collections to the University in 1977, although several projects, including exhibitions, were carried out to highlight the importance of the visual material. In 1980-1981 The Fawcett Society deposited objects, including banners, with a number of museums (including the Fawcett Library). In 1984 the Mary Evans Picture Library became The Women's Library Commercial Picture Library partner. By the 1990s a contract Visual Materials Curator was appointed and it appears that the groupings by object type were made in this period as were some object descriptions. In Sep 1995 a project to identify, package and inventory objects from the museum and archives collection was begun; with the first museum accessions register started in 1998. Towards the end of the 1990s the Library was part of the JISC Image Digitisation Initiative (JIDI). This created digital images of the banner collection which were posted on the web as part of the Visual Arts Data Service, VADS (later the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS)) by the end of 2001. Between 2000-2001 there was also a project to document objects held within archive collections.

With the move to the new building in 2002 the importance of visual material (initially focusing on the banner collection) was formally recognised by the inclusion of an Exhibition Hall in the building. Initially this was designed for a 'permanent' exhibition of the suffrage banners and other treasures. However, the actual move to the building saw a change in the Library's audience development. This, together with a recognition that the banners could not be on permanent display due to conservation concerns, resulted in a programme of exhibitions. For the first few years a programme of 3 exhibitions per year was carried out. However, this was later reduced to 2 exhibitions per year in order to develop a more interactive public, university and schools programme of events. External curators are often appointed to work with the Special Collections Curator to bring specific expertise to the exhibition.

Alongside the move to the new premises in 2002 The Women's Library agreed to meet the standards for Museum Registration, and later Museums' Accreditation. A three-year project, 2002-2005 documented the museum objects, with funding provided by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Some 3500 objects were described on the archive-museum catalogue CALM to comply with minimum SPECTRUM standards and rehoused as part of this project. Subsequent to this the majority of museum catalogue entries were edited and made available to the public via the online catalogue (by 2008). As part of the 2002-2005 project, a template for cataloguing objects in CALM was produced, together with best practice guidance for rehousing specific types of objects held in the collections. This was used for subsequent deposits, including objects within archives (for which a SPECTRUM/ISAD(G) template was agreed). As part of the retroconversion project of archive catalogues, existing descriptions of objects in archives were edited to be more consistent with the 2002-2005 project.