National Life Story Collection, Fawcett Collection

The archive consists of reading copies of tapes, summaries and transcriptions of fourteen individual interviews.

Originals are held at the National Sound Archive.

This collection is available for consultation, although readers are advised to contact The Women's Library in advance of their first visit. In most cases interviewees have signed a clearance note allowing the tapes to form 'a permanent public reference resource for use in research, publication, education, lectures and broadcasting'. However, there are restrictions on access to some individual interviews.

Transferred to The Women's Library by the National Sound Archive, 1999-2000.

The National Life Story Collection (1987-) was established in 1987 to 'record first-hand experiences of as wide a cross-section of present-day society as possible'. It operates as an independent charitable trust within the Oral History Section of the British Library Sound Archive and undertakes oral history fieldwork. It has initiated a series of interviewing programmes funded from sponsorship, charitable and individual donations and voluntary effort. In the early 1990s a project supported by The Fawcett Society was undertaken to interview 'pioneering career women, each of whom made their mark in traditionally male-dominated areas, such as politics, law and medicine.' Members of the Friends of the Fawcett Library, now The Women's Library, conducted the interviews.