The Women's Bookstore collection consists of materials relating to the operation of several Vancouver women's organizations and reflects the issues that dominated the women's movement throughout the 1970s. Consistent with the community based nature of women's movements during this period, the scope and content of the collection reflects the diversity common to a phenomenon rather than the administrative and subject coherence found in records generated by a single organization. As such, the collection as whole gains its coherence due primarily to the interdependence rather than independence of the individual items to one another. This also applies to the records generated by autonomous organizations in the collection. While the different organizations should be regarded as distinct, a good deal of the records concern the communication between various organizations and women's groups across the country or identify issues of concern to a broad range of organizations. Thus, the collection as whole should be regarded as a record of a dynamic process in which a common ideology served to unify the aims of distinctive organizations, persons, and subjects.
The collection is comprised of the records of the Women's Bookstore, Women's Caucus, A Woman's Place, Transition House, the British Columbia Federation of Women and the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. Includes constitutions, minutes, reports, correspondence, position papers, and sound recordings. Also includes newsletters from women's centres across British Columbia and Canada, subject files, and an assortment of feminist publications.