Women's Library: Knowledge without bounds

Sometime in the late '80s, people started sending Adele Patrick boxes. There were boxes of books and boxes of slides and photos and protest badges and well-thumbed copies of Spare Rib, and stickers featuring the cherubic features of Rosie the Riveter.

The boxes piled up. They glowered accusingly at her from corners. She stuck some labels on them, made a cup of tea and wondered what on earth to do. From such humble beginnings a library was born.

Adele had helped form an organization called Women in Profile, who didn't want Glasgow's status as City of Culture to be solely about the achievements of "beardy white poets". They spread the word, and before long people started to send them material about women. Hence the boxes.

None of this happened overnight. And Glasgow Women's Library is still, according to Adele, very much in the process of growing up.

"Our birth was in Garnethill, when we didn't even have windows or a phone," she recalls. "Parnie Street was our childhood, and our temporary location in Trongate is our tricky adolescence. The Mitchell will, I suppose, be our adulthood'.

For the Women's Library is relocating, and in April 2009 it will move into a shiny new home at The Mitchell - Glasgow, and Europe's, biggest public reference library. All GWL books are in storage, all lending services are suspended. For most libraries this would mean a chance to put your feet up and pass round the Ginger Snaps, but GWL isn't like most libraries. According to Board Member Christine Reid: "Glasgow Women's Library is about a great deal more than books. At times it's about anything but books."

In this sense GWL are pioneers. Flick through their programme and you'll find film screenings, historical walks and a successful adult literacy programme. With users aged eighteen to eighty, the focus is on learning, interaction, community and inclusiveness - now buzz words for city councils wanting to overhaul their library services. Adele explains that GWL has taken the opposite journey from the typical library.

"Unlike the traditional nineteenth century model of libraries, we're very much a grassroots project. Institutions like The Mitchell are being influenced by us, and we'll soon be sharing its space. It's as if we're both travelling in opposite directions and have met in the middle at this wonderful moment."

It's too early to tell whether it's a trend or a paradigm shift, but libraries are becoming fluid entities – they flow into communities, communities flow into them. GWL can be a garden, a historical walk or an online course. It can produce friendships, scrapbooks or a new word learned in English. In a culture where social interactions are often mediated by food, booze or the tint, libraries can provide a valuable alternative space.

One example of this is the popularity of GWL's 'Stitch N' Bitch' knitting club. However, I'm rather suspicious of this recent folksy trend in feminism. Shouldn't women be chaining themselves to railings rather than weaving corn dollies? Adele sees it differently:

"What you have to realise is that a lot of very vulnerable women come to us. They may be recovering from abuse or addiction, or speak very little English. GWL can be a confidence-building space for them. When self-esteem is achieved, issues to do with rights start surfacing. This is an environment that plants seeds."

With violence against women on the increase, and ongoing inequalities of pay and opportunity, women's libraries continue to be relevant and attractive to a new generation of feminists. Adele is keen to challenge the stereotypes attached to them:

"It's not a bunch of women whinging about blokes. It's about empowering, celebrating, recording, preserving, inspiring. It's an alternative space where women can feel safe and access the information they need to make choices."

As well as its community achievements, the library has accumulated an impressive collection of 20,000 books and a number of rare artifacts. What one item, I wonder, would Adele save in a fire? She thinks about this.

"Our umbrella stand, I think. It was painted by suffragettes incarcerated in Duke Street prison, at the request of a sympathetic female governor. GWL is a conduit for stories like this. There's a whole shadow history of female achievement that people aren't aware of."

The library itself has its own vivid history, and this is undoubtedly one of its most exciting periods. But what is Adele's vision for GWL's future?

"I want to see a joyous celebration of what libraries have become, and what they are becoming. I want our new premises to be an amazing space. It's time for a new generation of women to make Glasgow Women's Library their own, to invent it anew."