5. BiblioFem and the Fawcett Library
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb054872 |
| Pages | 30-31 |
| Published date | 01 April 1984 |
| Date | 01 April 1984 |
| Author | Fiona Pirie |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
5. BiblioFem and the Fawcett
Library
by Fiona Pirie
BiblioFem
A key bibliographic tool for retrieval of information on women is BiblioFem, a com-
bined catalogue and bibliography on microfiche. As a catalogue, BiblioFem is a record
of the book stock and more recently acquired non-book materials of the Fawcett
Library (excluding archival materials, ephemera, etc.). It also incorporates the holdings
of the Equal Opportunities Commission Information Centre. The Equal Opportunities
Commission was established by the British government in 1975 under the provisions
of the Sex Discrimination Act, to promote equality of opportunity between women
and men and to work towards eliminating discrimination against women on grounds
of sex or marital status, especially in the fields of employment and training,
As a catalogue of the Fawcett Library, BiblioFem reflects the particular strengths of
the collection in areas such as the history of women's suffrage, women's movements
and organisations; the economic and social position of women in society; women
and the law; women and education; and biographies of women. Most of the collec-
tion,
in particular the historical material, concerns women in Britain, although there
is also a substantial amount of information by and about women in other parts of
the world, especially the Commonwealth and USA. Certain areas of Fawcett Library
stock—e.g.,
many biographies, historical pamphlets, and the Josephine Butler
collection—have still to be incorporated into BiblioFem. As a catalogue of the EOC
Information Centre, BiblioFem's subject coverage focuses primarily on the contem-
porary economic, social and legal position of women in Britain.
As a bibliography, BiblioFem covers materials on women published in the UK since
1950 and in the USA since 1968, and which have been catalogued by the British
Library or the Library of Congress. Entries for the bibliography are extracted from
the databases of the British National Bibliography and the Library of Congress through
the British Library Automated Information Service (BLAISE). Thus the bibliography
element of BiblioFem covers much of current output from British and USA publishers,
and reflects the comparatively recent growth in material from women's publishing
houses, in areas such as women's fiction, sexuality, and feminism in general.
BiblioFem began in 1978 and is produced every two months on COMfiche, each new
set cumulating, correcting, and superseding the previous one. Records of over 45,000
items are currently included, selected from the British Library MARC databases or
locally catalogued to AACR2 standards and classified according to the 19th edition
of the Dewey Decimal Classification (with slight modifications). The records are ar-
ranged in alphabetical sequence, with entries under author, title, series, etc., and
classified sequence, each entry providing full bibliographical details. Location is
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