British Library aims to trace writers, photographers and artists whose work appeared in magazine from 1972 to 1993
It was radical, out there, with covers shouting from the news stands on subjects ranging from "Liberating Orgasm" to "Kitchen sink racism" and the prevalence of "disturbing images of women".
Spare Rib charted the grassroots feminist movement through 239 editions from its 1972 launch to the magazine's demise in 1993.
Its pages, produced after lengthy and challenging debate by the collective that ran it, reflected an era when, to quote co-founding editor Marsha Rowe, women were "changing the way we used language, the way we talked and dressed and lived".
Now the British Library is embarking on one of its most ambitious projects, which it is hoped will result in the complete run of the magazine being digitised and accessible free on its website.
It is ambitious because of the very ethos of a magazine run by a collective that accepted work from thousands of contributors – mainly women but also men – during its 21 years.
Copyright laws demand the British Library locate and gain permission from the majority of them for the dream to become reality, so the call-out has been made to anyone who contributed to its design, illustration, words or photographs to get in touch.
Although it is a feasibility study at this stage, the library needs as many contributors as possible to contact it by the end of January.
"It's such an iconic magazine of the women's liberation movement, and so unique in terms of design, style and content, that it's a very valuable resource," said British Library curator Polly Russell, in charge of the gargantuan task.
"We have just completed a project collecting an archive of aural histories of second generation feminists, and we know from that there is a lot of interest, both academic and general public, in this period and in these women."
One of "these women", Sue Sullivan, now 72, a former member of the collective, said the digitisation project would make it easier to "access a really important period of women's liberation and what went on around the movement, because Spare Rib was both part of it and separate from it".
She said: "It [the magazine] housed a lot of contradictions that reflected a lot that was going on in the women's liberation movement."
The magazine sought to provide an alternative to the traditional gender roles. Cover headlines such as "Doctor's Needles not Knitting Needles", "Cellulite – the slimming fraud" and "Why women starve themselves" ran alongside articles featuring women as diverse as country and western singer Tammy Wynette, of Stand by your Man fame, or US political activist Angela Davis, who was interviewed about black women and revolutionary freedom.
Sullivan, who worked for the International Community of Women with HIV/Aids after leaving Spare Rib, said of the magazine: "I lived and breathed and dreamed about it the whole time I was on it, the good times and bad times as well."
Those bad times involved the collective embarking on "painful" discussions on how best to tackle issues such as sexuality and racism, said Sullivan.
The magazine became a forum for many different threads of feminism, which sometimes led to acrimonious debate, but also reflected "what was going on in general around the whole progressive, alternative politics".
"I don't think there has been anything like it since. It was non-aligned, very diverse.
"They were trying to walk a very precarious line between representing and exploring issues that feminists were interested in and reaching out to new women."
It was crucial that the call went out to track down the many thousands of contributors – "anyone who ever wrote a little news item, or a review, or sent in fiction or poetry", said Sullivan.
"Because if we don't, if we can't reach those people, we will lose an opportunity that probably will never happen again. This is it. We have really got to do it.
"So, if you ever contributed then get in touch. If you are a younger woman, do you have a mother, an aunt, or an older friend who might have been involved in the 70s and 80s? Because it really matters."
Spare Rib is available at the library – and other specialist libraries – in paper form. Putting it online would allow a rich vein of 1970s and 80s history to be accessible worldwide, said Rowe.
"The whole feminism revival is happening." Some countries are now "at the stage we were back in the 70s".
"It gives a power to the now when you know what has happened before."
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