WINE is the network of women's libraries, archives and information centres in Europe. The initiative emerged during an expert meeting that took place in Utrecht in 1995, organized by the Network WISE and the IIAV. The need for such an European network of women's libraries, documentation and information centres was recognized by the university partners and integrated into the preparations for the Socrates Thematic Network ATHENA in 1995.

The plans for WINE were officially presented at the Limerick conference in 1996, when the European Association of Women's Studies AOIFE was officially established.

In October 2002, new ideas and future projects have been discussed and formalized during the Bologna meeting, co-organized with ATHENA.

The coordinators of WINE are Annamaria Tagliavini and Maria Grönroos;
The assistant of WINE is Marta Garro.

We hope your institution or organisation wants to join the WINE network!
If so, please fill in and send the on-line questionnaire.
Check also if your institution/organisation is listed in the Mapping The World database: our intention is to use this already existing and very informative database as a kind of membership base- the IIAV has kindly offered to help us with this matter.
With the help of the Italian Women's Library in Bologna, we have already established a mailing list for WINE members. If you are interested in joining the e-mail list, please specify it in the questionnaire and your name will be immediately added.
For more info or any enquiry, please contact Marta Garro.

The purpose of WINE is to provide a common platform for European women's libraries to participate in joint European projects in the field of education and research in gender, women's and feminist studies. In this direction, WINE already co-operates with ATHENA to strengthen the link between academic research and information/documentation.
It aims at:

• co-ordinating the development of the partners' facilities in the direction of training and research;
• creating positive synergies with university programmes in Women's Studies;
• fulfilling a representative function for its partners within different programmes of the European Commission in the field of information and documentation services on women and gender.
• setting up specific regional meetings for professionals in the field, which will take place in the time-slots in-between the larger international 'Know How' conferences.
• broadening the number of partner institutions from all the European countries. Therefore special attention is given in both WINE and ATHENA to the development of co-operative ties with Eastern and Southern European partners.