When Antonia Byatt, the director of the Women's Library, recently saw a photo of herself with members of the Women's Institute, she says she was surprised to find that she was indistinguishable from the WI ladies she was lined up next to.
On reflection, she realised this was as it should be. 'It says I'm comfortable being in the company of active women,' she
comments enigmatically.
Byatt's response is typical of the way she talks about herself. She manages to be warm and prickly at the same time, answering questions with a reluctant openness, often with crossed arms.
The photo shoot was arranged to publicise a joint exhibition the Women's Library is organising with the WI. The library recently got a grant of just over £100,000 from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation to support the exhibition, which will use the archives of the National Federation of Women's Institutes, held at the library's east London premises.
The exhibition will also incorporate local WI exhibitions, developed in collaboration with local members using their own archives as it tours Yorkshire, East Anglia and the west of England.
The exact theme of the exhibition is not yet decided, as the library is in the process of appointing a curator, but Byatt says she hopes it will tell the WI story and dispel some of the myths surrounding the organisation. 'If you say "Women's Institute", lots of people would think jam and jerseys. But if you ask members, they do all sorts of other things, and they've been an extremely active campaigning organisation.'
But her admiration of the WI has not led her as far as joining it: 'It is a rural organisation on the whole, and I have been in London since I was two years old. If I lived in a rural district, I imagine it would be a very good way of being involved in your community. I think their women power is impressive.'
The WI exhibition is in keeping with the diverse range of issues the library has tackled. It has put on an exhibition looking at beauty queens, and one on women in Thatcher's Britain has just ended. The library is now planning an exhibition on prostitution, and the intention is to include contributions from women working in the sex industry today.
The library, which opened in its present form in 2002, has about 16,000 visitors a year, and the Thatcher's women exhibition attracted around 7,000 visitors. But it has still managed to generate widespread interest and national press coverage. Byatt puts this down to the choice of subject matter and good publicity.
'They are approachable subjects, but have a lot of depth and contemporary currency. We've always connected the past to the present, and promoted them in a popular way. But we've backed them up with expertise in the talks programme.'
The Women's Library began life in 1926 as the library of the London Society for Women's Service, led by Millicent Fawcett, with both organisations using the suffragist's name during their history. It was renamed the Women's Library in 2002 when it was re-opened on the site of one of the oldest washhouses in east London, with the remit to 'document and explore women's lives in Britain'.
Part of London Metropolitan University, the library has archives and a museum collection, including over 60,000 books and pamphlets, periodicals, press cuttings, handbills, posters, photographs, paintings, textiles and objects.
The library's core audience is made up of students and researchers, though Byatt is aiming to widen it, and is particularly hoping to bring in a more local audience. However, she is wary of using visitor figures as a measure of success. 'I think we should aim for greater use of the collections, but that is not the same as visitor figures. What we are looking at is what people do with the collections, rather than who walks through the door.'
Though it is called the Women's Library, it is a registered museum and Byatt jokingly refers to herself as a 'charlatan' as she had no curatorial experience before becoming its director. Her background is in literature, which is not surprising as her mother is the novelist and academic AS Byatt.
Luckily, she says, she has no desire to write herself. Her father was an economist specialising in water regulation, and he's responsible for her interest in public-sector organisations and how to run them well.
She was born in Durham in 1960, and the family moved to London when she was two. After a 'more or less' happy childhood, she studied English at Cambridge University. She spent a year in New York working for a photographer, then moved back to the UK to work for the then Greater London Council.
That was followed by a stint as a freelance writer and general secretary of the Fawcett Society, when she first got to know what was to become the Women's Library collection. In 1988 she became a literature officer at the then Arts Council of England, and she went on to become head of literature at London's South Bank Centre in 1993.
She joined the Women's Library in 2000, while it was still in the development stage.
'It was a huge challenge to move what had been hidden in the basement into a public building, and to think about how to extend the audience,' she remembers. 'Also, I hadn't had to raise money before, and I thought as a manager in the arts sector, I jolly well needed to be able to do it.'
Getting the library opened on time was an achievement, but she says it was really the start of the learning process for her and the team. 'It is a lot like a driving test. Just because you have passed the test doesn't mean you can drive. I've always felt it was a five-year project. I think we've made enormous strides, but we can't sit back on our laurels because there is a lot more to do.'
She says there have been few problems about cross-domain working within the library, and all staff are being trained to be able to engage with both the archive and objects. But she says she has been surprised at the divisions that exist within the heritage sector.
'Because I'm a bit of an outsider, I find it quite hard to see why there should be such distinctions between domains. Although there has been a huge push for cross-domain working, it doesn't work like that in practice. If you go to a museum conference there'll be no librarians, and vice versa. I'm keen to see our collections as a whole, because the user doesn't care about the distinctions.'
Byatt says the challenges of running the library include maintaining funding and raising project funding. And because of the library's size, it has the additional challenge of working closely with other organisations: 'Our success in the future will lie in working in partnership, as we are doing with the WI and academic departments.
But that is demanding, because if you are working with other people you always have to think of their needs. Sometimes they have the same agenda, and sometimes not.'
One of the most important partnerships is with London Metropolitan University. Fortunately, Byatt says the university is an exciting environment to be in and the fact that it has a mission of social justice has helped when it comes to taking on difficult subjects, such as the planned exhibition on prostitution.
'A local authority might be more shy about these issues, but a lot of the leading work in this area has come out of this university.'
However, Byatt bridles at the suggestion that the library has a radical feminist agenda.
'I don't think we're radical, that's not our history. Our collections have always been used by men and if we were radical then we would have closed the door to men. The collection came out of the suffragist movement, not the suffragette movement, which was woman only.'
She says that this has meant the library took flak from the mainstream press when it was set up, and has taken it from some women about the subjects it's tackled. Not that she minds too much, as taking on hard things is part of the tradition of the collections.
'When we did the exhibition on beauty queens, some people asked what we were doing putting this on, and I'm quite glad about that. It is the debate I'm interested in. Our job is to put something on and ask, "What do you think about that?", not to say, "This is what we think and you should think the same".' mj
On reflection, she realised this was as it should be. 'It says I'm comfortable being in the company of active women,' she
comments enigmatically.
Byatt's response is typical of the way she talks about herself. She manages to be warm and prickly at the same time, answering questions with a reluctant openness, often with crossed arms.
The photo shoot was arranged to publicise a joint exhibition the Women's Library is organising with the WI. The library recently got a grant of just over £100,000 from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation to support the exhibition, which will use the archives of the National Federation of Women's Institutes, held at the library's east London premises.
The exhibition will also incorporate local WI exhibitions, developed in collaboration with local members using their own archives as it tours Yorkshire, East Anglia and the west of England.
The exact theme of the exhibition is not yet decided, as the library is in the process of appointing a curator, but Byatt says she hopes it will tell the WI story and dispel some of the myths surrounding the organisation. 'If you say "Women's Institute", lots of people would think jam and jerseys. But if you ask members, they do all sorts of other things, and they've been an extremely active campaigning organisation.'
But her admiration of the WI has not led her as far as joining it: 'It is a rural organisation on the whole, and I have been in London since I was two years old. If I lived in a rural district, I imagine it would be a very good way of being involved in your community. I think their women power is impressive.'
The WI exhibition is in keeping with the diverse range of issues the library has tackled. It has put on an exhibition looking at beauty queens, and one on women in Thatcher's Britain has just ended. The library is now planning an exhibition on prostitution, and the intention is to include contributions from women working in the sex industry today.
The library, which opened in its present form in 2002, has about 16,000 visitors a year, and the Thatcher's women exhibition attracted around 7,000 visitors. But it has still managed to generate widespread interest and national press coverage. Byatt puts this down to the choice of subject matter and good publicity.
'They are approachable subjects, but have a lot of depth and contemporary currency. We've always connected the past to the present, and promoted them in a popular way. But we've backed them up with expertise in the talks programme.'
The Women's Library began life in 1926 as the library of the London Society for Women's Service, led by Millicent Fawcett, with both organisations using the suffragist's name during their history. It was renamed the Women's Library in 2002 when it was re-opened on the site of one of the oldest washhouses in east London, with the remit to 'document and explore women's lives in Britain'.
Part of London Metropolitan University, the library has archives and a museum collection, including over 60,000 books and pamphlets, periodicals, press cuttings, handbills, posters, photographs, paintings, textiles and objects.
The library's core audience is made up of students and researchers, though Byatt is aiming to widen it, and is particularly hoping to bring in a more local audience. However, she is wary of using visitor figures as a measure of success. 'I think we should aim for greater use of the collections, but that is not the same as visitor figures. What we are looking at is what people do with the collections, rather than who walks through the door.'
Though it is called the Women's Library, it is a registered museum and Byatt jokingly refers to herself as a 'charlatan' as she had no curatorial experience before becoming its director. Her background is in literature, which is not surprising as her mother is the novelist and academic AS Byatt.
Luckily, she says, she has no desire to write herself. Her father was an economist specialising in water regulation, and he's responsible for her interest in public-sector organisations and how to run them well.
She was born in Durham in 1960, and the family moved to London when she was two. After a 'more or less' happy childhood, she studied English at Cambridge University. She spent a year in New York working for a photographer, then moved back to the UK to work for the then Greater London Council.
That was followed by a stint as a freelance writer and general secretary of the Fawcett Society, when she first got to know what was to become the Women's Library collection. In 1988 she became a literature officer at the then Arts Council of England, and she went on to become head of literature at London's South Bank Centre in 1993.
She joined the Women's Library in 2000, while it was still in the development stage.
'It was a huge challenge to move what had been hidden in the basement into a public building, and to think about how to extend the audience,' she remembers. 'Also, I hadn't had to raise money before, and I thought as a manager in the arts sector, I jolly well needed to be able to do it.'
Getting the library opened on time was an achievement, but she says it was really the start of the learning process for her and the team. 'It is a lot like a driving test. Just because you have passed the test doesn't mean you can drive. I've always felt it was a five-year project. I think we've made enormous strides, but we can't sit back on our laurels because there is a lot more to do.'
She says there have been few problems about cross-domain working within the library, and all staff are being trained to be able to engage with both the archive and objects. But she says she has been surprised at the divisions that exist within the heritage sector.
'Because I'm a bit of an outsider, I find it quite hard to see why there should be such distinctions between domains. Although there has been a huge push for cross-domain working, it doesn't work like that in practice. If you go to a museum conference there'll be no librarians, and vice versa. I'm keen to see our collections as a whole, because the user doesn't care about the distinctions.'
Byatt says the challenges of running the library include maintaining funding and raising project funding. And because of the library's size, it has the additional challenge of working closely with other organisations: 'Our success in the future will lie in working in partnership, as we are doing with the WI and academic departments.
But that is demanding, because if you are working with other people you always have to think of their needs. Sometimes they have the same agenda, and sometimes not.'
One of the most important partnerships is with London Metropolitan University. Fortunately, Byatt says the university is an exciting environment to be in and the fact that it has a mission of social justice has helped when it comes to taking on difficult subjects, such as the planned exhibition on prostitution.
'A local authority might be more shy about these issues, but a lot of the leading work in this area has come out of this university.'
However, Byatt bridles at the suggestion that the library has a radical feminist agenda.
'I don't think we're radical, that's not our history. Our collections have always been used by men and if we were radical then we would have closed the door to men. The collection came out of the suffragist movement, not the suffragette movement, which was woman only.'
She says that this has meant the library took flak from the mainstream press when it was set up, and has taken it from some women about the subjects it's tackled. Not that she minds too much, as taking on hard things is part of the tradition of the collections.
'When we did the exhibition on beauty queens, some people asked what we were doing putting this on, and I'm quite glad about that. It is the debate I'm interested in. Our job is to put something on and ask, "What do you think about that?", not to say, "This is what we think and you should think the same".' mj
