SAVE THE WOMENS LIBRARY CAMPAIGN UPDATE

CAMPAIGN CALLS FOR REOPENING OF THE BIDDING PROCESS TO

SAVE THE WOMEN’S LIBRARY

The campaign to save The Women’s Library from closure and relocation today held a lively demonstration outside the Holloway Road campus of London Met, where a selection panel was meeting inside to make recommendations on LSE’s bid to take over The Women’s Library collection and move it into its own library.
The selection panel, set up by Dr Paul Bowler, Deputy Vice Chancellor of London Met, to decide the fate of The Women’s Library, met this afternoon to decide whether to allow its collection of material to be moved to the LSE.


The panel agreed to meet representatives from the campaign before their meeting, but the panel was unwilling to inform us of the outcome of their deliberations before they are ratified at the next London Met Board of Governors meeting on 27th September.

If the decision to move the collection to the LSE were allowed to stand, it would mean the effective closure of The Women’s Library, with the loss of the purpose- built building in Old Castle Street, E1, which was opened only ten years ago with the aid of £4 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Addressing the panel on behalf of the Save the Women’s Library Campaign, its members argued that it is imperative that the library remains its current building with its current staff. They lobbied the panel to re-open the bidding process so that the LSE and any other interested institutions could resubmit more acceptable proposals, on the grounds that:

• Moving the collection to the new LSE site would change it from a living to a dead collection, with a loss of accessibility for its local, national and international community of users.

• The bidding process has not been transparent and has been rushed through without proper consultation.

• It has recently come to light that London Met has misled stakeholders, Women’s Library staff, readers and donors, by initially claiming that it would be handed over as a package, which would keep the building, collection and staff together. However London Met later refused to include the building as part of the package unless it was leased for prohibitively high rents.

• In general the bidding process appears to not fulfil the university’s legal obligation towards transparency and equal opportunities.

In the light of this, the campaign fears that it is left with no alternative but to explore the legal ramifications of London Met’s lack of transparency and consultation with stakeholders, and its failure to uphold its equal opportunity responsibilities.