Women's Library

The Women's Library
The Women's Library reading room in the LSE library
Map
LocationLionel Robbins Building, The London School of Economics and Political Science, 10 Portugal Street, Westminster, London, WC2A 2HD, England
TypeLibrary
Established1926
Collection
Items collectedBooks, journals, newspapers, magazines, sound and music recordings, archives, pamphlets, drawings and manuscripts
Size
  • 60,000 books and pamphlets
  • 3,500 periodical titles
  • 5,000 objects
  • 500 personal and organisational archives
  • 500 zines
Access and use
Access requirementsOpen to anyone with a need to use the collections and services and those coming to see exhibitions
Other information
WebsiteThe Women's Library

The Women's Library is England's main library and museum resource on women and the women's movement, concentrating on Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries. It has an institutional history as a coherent collection dating back to the mid-1920s, although its "core" collection dates from a library established by Ruth Cavendish Bentinck in 1909. Since 2013, the library has been in the custody of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), which manages the collection as part of the British Library of Political and Economic Science in a dedicated area known as the Women's Library.