[1] Under apartheid, black workers and writers were "forbidden entrance into some of the basic institutions required to practice history, such as archives and public libraries.
[4] The "gathering strength of the labour movement" with its "exciting potential" for social change attracted academics who combined scholarship and "working-class perspectives.
[9] Its activities in the 1990s included Saturday afternoon workshops "typically attended by over 35 people, overwhelmingly drawn from the shop steward layer and community activists.
In the early 2000s, the Johannesburg Municipality withdrew its previous subsidies to the Workers' Library and Museum, which had taken the form of rebates on service charges, rent and taxes.
Like other LSOs at the time,[12] it was meanwhile hit by the drying up of donor and solidarity funding after the end of apartheid, and displacement by unions' own expanding research and service departments.
The library collection is now housed at the offices of Khanya College, which relocated to Kerk Street, while the premises are now a separate Workers' Museum, run by the municipality for tourists and schools.