The Women’s Library is free to use and open to everyone. You can find books, pamphlets and journals using LibrarySearch and archives using the archive catalogue. If there is material you would like to consult in the Women’s Library Reading Room (4th floor), you will need to fill in the form here before you visit, and the reading room team will be in touch.
You will find digitised interwar feminist pamphlets from the Women’s Library and a selection of posters from the Women’s Library on the Welcome – LSE Digital Library (arkivum.net) . If you click on ‘legacy Digital collections’ Home | LSE Digital Library and click through the ‘Browse’ section, alighting on the image for ‘Women’s Rights’ you will find that a large range of organisational reports, minutes, pamphlets, newspapers and journals has been digitised, with material covering much more than suffrage. Much of this digitisation programme has benefited from Friends of TWL funding. In addition, LSE has digitised a number of TWL’s rare books, Beatrice Webb’s diaries and the records of the Fabian Society. Good hunting!
LSE Library new online archives catalogue
Our new online archives catalogue is now available at https://archives.lse.ac.uk. It includes the catalogue for The Women’s Library archives and museum collections, alongside all our other archives collections. Researchers can choose to focus their search on The Women’s Library collections using the ‘Discrete Collections’ filter in Advanced Search, or to search across the collections in their entirety.
It also features:
· a streamlined search interface, developed in line with user feedback
· new guidance on searching the catalogue
· updated ‘about the catalogue’ information, to make it clearer what the catalogue does and it doesn’t cover. Thank you to those Friends who took part in focus groups and user testing as part of the enhancement project.
Contact the Library by email on library.enquiries@lse.ac.uk| or telephone on 020 7955 7229 to book a reader space, order materials for consultation and ask for any additional information or guidance you need.
Ideally, readers should book a reader space two days in advance of a visit. However, it is certainly best to reserve in advance the materials you wish to consult and raise any queries you have ahead of your visit.
You can request to keep items on hold for up to 3 days but staff recommend you keep a note of your references, and be prepared to re-order items if you return at a later date.
If you would like to view microform items, make contact in advance to reserve one of the microform reader-printers for the day you will be visiting. However, the microforms themselves do not need to be ordered in advance through the document fetching service.
Users can take their own digital photographs of items at no cost. However, you must make sure your copying is legal. Copyright guidance is available on the Reading Room desks and on posters. Cameras must be in silent mode; flash photography and handheld scanners are not permitted
To make a donation to the Friends of The Women’s Library please contact friendsofthewomenslibrary@gmail.com