Welcome to Jessie Street National Women's Library
Our mission:
Our mission is to provide for the Australian community a specialist library which collects, preserves and promotes the awareness of the cultural heritage of Australian women, facilitating learning, research and communication.
Our aims:
- To collect the published and unpublished materials that document the lives and experience of women of all ethnic, racial and religious backgrounds and of all socio-economic classes.
- To ensure that documents relating to Australian women's lives and activities are preserved and made accessible.
- To highlight the contribution of Australian women to this country's development.
- To support the field of women's history.
GOVERNANCE:
A Board of Management is elected annually and consists of three Office Bearers: Chair, Vice Chair, Secretary; plus no fewer than five and no more than nine ordinary members each of whom must be a financial member of the Library. The Honorary Librarian shall be an ex-officio member of the Board without voting rights. All executive members may stand for re-election provided that no member shall hold the same office for more than five years in succession. The Board administers the Library's finances, issues a quarterly newsletter and oversees all fundraising events.
Current Executive (AGM 9 April 2011):
- Marie Muir, Chair
- Michele Ginswick, Vice-Chair
- Jan Burnswoods, Secretary
Chris Burvill, Robyn Harriott, Sybil Jack, Judy King, Beverley Kingston, Christine Lees, Jozefa Sobski, Bev Sodbinow
COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT POLICY:
Australia's national women's library is a specialist library with its focus on collecting and preserving the literary and cultural heritage of women from all ethnic, religious and socio-economic backgrounds. All works must be in English.
Fiction: the Library collects poetry, drama, novels and short stories by Australian women writers from early times to the present. Non-fiction: the Library collects both Australian and international writers where such works help to provide a context for analysis and comparison of issues affecting women everywhere.
Serials: the Library collects Australian, and English-language titles from overseas, where relevant to the Collection criteria.
Posters: the Library collects images illustrating changing attitudes towards women, particularly in the areas of work and education. Preference is given to posters designed and/or printed by women.
Archives: the Library collects letters, diaries, journals, papers of women's organisations, audio recordings, photographs. (For more detail please see The Archives Collection under the general heading Collections on this website).
The Library does NOT collect text books, manuals, kit-sets, cookery books (unless of historical value i.e. where recipes reflect social change or upheaval as in times of war or Depression); works of art, music scores or films; biographies in which women figure solely in the capacity of wife or partner.
"To keep women's words, women's works, alive and powerful." - Ursula Le Guin