Books and reading have always been tools for survival and liberation for women and oppressed individuals, or those who feel non-belonging within their community. At the same time, the burning, stealing, and censoring of books have long been strategies of colonization and control.
In Lebanon, feminist books are mainly found in private bookshelves at home or in elite universities. We believe that knowledge should not be an inaccessible resource nor an exclusive individual wealth. The Knowledge Workshop works for more equitable redistribution of feminist knowledge as a transformative collective resource.
We believe in the importance of a feminist library being open to the public. We invite anyone to come in to read and to borrow from our wide selection of books, including fiction, autobiography, sexuality, women’s labor, spirituality, history and activism. In addition to our books by and about women in West Asia and North Africa, we are deliberate in including a selection of books by women of color, especially queer women of color.
We especially welcome, and invite you to spread the word to women who do not have access to feminist literature elsewhere.
Interested in supporting the feminist library? Help us by donating books. Our wishlist is coming soon.
Visit the library at Castoon (Pain d’or) Building, 3rd floor, General Chehab Street, Furn El Chebbak, Beirut, Lebanon.
In addition to sitting and reading in our KW library, you can check out books either through a membership card, or as a visitor.
Some books in our library are marked as L, meaning Limited Use. These are books that are not included in the borrowing system, in many cases because they are out of stock. Therefore, we take extra care of them. But you are welcome to use them inside KW!
Each person can borrow up to 2 books from our library at a time.
The loan period is two (2) weeks.
Yes, You can renew a book once for another 1 week (unless the book has been reserved by another library member).
Come to the KW library and renew them, or send us an email (please remember to do so by the date your book is due, so you do not get an overdue fine).
The librarian has the right to recall a book back, for a compelling reason.
We do have a membership system, where you get a card for a donation of 30,000 L.L (20$) per year. The membership card can be renewed every year by paying the same annual fee.
Or as a visitor, you can donate a small amount to our library every time you check out books.
We only accept cash for donations.
Overdue books have fees of 5,000 L.L per day of every day that the book is late for local books. Books that are published outside Lebanon have a fee of 8,000 L.L for every day that they are overdue.
Please let us know immediately so we can acquire another copy. Fines do apply, and may reach up to 60,000 L.L.
It depends on the damage. If it’s minor, don’t worry about it. If it is a serious damage, fines may apply.
No, at the moment we do not have the technology or the staff to be able to do that.
Many of our books came to us as second hand, but we take care of them nevertheless and we want to make sure they live long and happy lives on our shelves. So please do not highlight, underline or put post-its that might damage the books.
We will use the money from the library for the library, and it will go to maintain its needs and the needs of visitors and library users (internet, coffee etc.), as well as to acquire more books. We would also like to hire a library keeper to assist you during library hours.
You can also come to the library when we are open to drop the books or to ask us a question about what books to donate.
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Hi there! If you are looking for a book that we might have, check out our database. Our official library hours are Tuesdays to Thursdays, 12:00-6:00 pm. You can come study, have coffee and read.
You can access our itinerary booklist here.
