Library and Information Science Commons^™

What Is A Lesbian Document? Platforming Archival Description, Documents, And History In Sweden, Rachel Pierce

Proceedings from the Document Academy

As Joanna Drucker (2014) convincingly argues, “Most information visualizations are acts of interpretation masquerading as presentation" (p. 10). This article investigates the visuality and built-in argumentations of the Alvin interface for digitized Swedish cultural heritage, focusing on how the platform defines a document and the effects this definition has on the accessibility and interconnectedness of documents related to lesbian and feminist histories. This paper addresses how (failed) systematization and an emphasis on large quantities of documents and metadata breathes new life into outdated historiographies and renders documents and information related to feminist and lesbian histories and connections between these histories …

Ua12/2/74 Lambda Society, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by and about Lambda Society

Hacia Un Contra-Archivo Radical Y Queer: El Archivo De La Memoria Trans Y La [Re]Construcción De La Memoria Colectiva Sobre La Violencia Institucional En Argentina, Valeria Bula

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Esta investigación analizará algunos procesos vinculados a la producción de la memoria travesti y trans* en Argentina a partir de la experiencia del Archivo de la Memoria Trans (AMT). Reconociendo el espacio de la memoria en Argentina como un espacio de lucha política, compuesto por diferentes interpretaciones y narrativas, el relato ofrecido por el AMT se estudiará como la adición de una nueva dimensión de complejidad al campo de la memoria en torno al terrorismo de Estado, específicamente en relación con la identidad de las víctimas. En este trabajo, propongo un análisis de la manera en que el AMT se …

Counternarratives Of Color: Race In Queer Archiving, Sanjula Rajat

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This research aims to better understand how race figures into the policies, processes, and materials at IHLIA LGBT Heritage, Europe’s largest LGBT-focused archive. By situating IHLIA within the broader history of alternative archives and Dutch homonationalism, the different ways in which race is an important consideration for the archive is examined. Particular attention is paid to the history, organization and location of the archive as well as the publicly funded nature of IHLIA to better understand the possibilities and limitations posed by the notion of an LGBT archive as opposed to a queer(ed) archive.

Archiving Feminist Truth In Trump’S Wake Of Lies, Julie Shayne

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

This article is about an assignment I do in one of my Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies social movement classes. I revised the assignment the first time teaching the class after Trump lost the 2020 election. For the assignment, students work in groups to research local feminist and gender justice organizations and deposit all of their original materials – recordings, photos, flyers, etc. – into a digital, open access archive I co-created several years ago with librarians and staff on my campus. In 2021 I had my students do the “post-Trump” edition where they researched local organizations about how their …

Guide To The Babe Didrikson Zaharias Collection, 1931-1956, Elizabeth Ezekiel

Archives & Special Collections Finding Aids

The Babe Didrikson Zaharias collection is part of the larger Kathleen Bertrand and Linda Lundin, Honoring Women in Sports Collection. This collection contains two boxes of materials. Box one contains 21 photographs of Didrikson Zaharias and one newspaper advertisement. Box two contains an original baseball of the touring House of David Team from 1934, a barnstorming baseball team. The ball contains team member signatures, including a “Babe Didrikson” signature in bold letters.

Mildred Ella “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias (1911-1956) was one of the most accomplished women athletes of the twentieth century. She grew up in Port Arthur and Beaumont, Texas; …

Wwa Reflection: Losing Sight, Making Scholarship, Sabrina M. Durso

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

No abstract provided.

The Queer Omaha Archives: The First 5 Years, Amy C. Schindler

Criss Library Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

Kick-off LGBTQ+ History Month by learning more about Nebraska’s LGBTQ+ history and how archivists and librarians are preserving and sharing the past today. Presentation for the NCompass Live, a program of the Nebraska Library Commission. The Queer Omaha Archives in UNO Libraries’ Archives and Special Collections launched in 2016 as the first dedicated LGBTQ+ archival and book collection in Nebraska. In the collecting initiative’s first 5 years it has grown to over 80 cubic feet and 3 GB of personal papers and organizational records, 50 oral history interviews, and 3,000 books. In this session, you will be introduced to some …

‘Access Necessitates Being Seen’: Queer Visibility And Intersectional Embodiment Within The Health Information Practices Of Queer Community Leaders, Travis L. Wagner, Vanessa Kitzie

Faculty Publications

Navigating healthcare infrastructures is particularly challenging for queer-identifying individuals, with significant barriers emerging around stigma and practitioner ignorance. Further intersecting, historically marginalised identities such as one’s race, age or ability exacerbate such engagement with healthcare, particularly the access to and use of reliable and appropriate health information. We explore the salience of one’s queer identity relative to other embodied identities when navigating health information and care for themselves and their communities. Thirty semi-structured interviews with queer community leaders from South Carolina inform our discussion of the role one’s queer visibility plays relational to the visibility of other identities. We find …

"We Can Be Our Best Alliance": Resilient Health Information Practices Of Lgbtqia+ Individuals As A Buffering Response To Minority Stress, Valerie Lookingbill, A. Nick Vera, Travis L. Wagner, Vanessa L. Kitzie

Student Publications

This article examines the resilient health information practices of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual (LGBTQIA+) individuals as agentic forms of buffering against minority stressors. Informed by semi- structured interviews with 30 LGBTQIA+ community leaders from South Carolina, our findings demonstrate how LGBTQIA+ individuals engage in resilient health information practices and community-based resilience. Further, our findings suggest that LGBTQIA+ communities integrate externally produced stressors. These findings have implications for future research on minority stress and resiliency strategies, such as shifting from outreach to engagement and leveraging what communities are doing, rather than assuming they are lacking. Further, as …

A Crisis Of Erasure: Transgender And Gender-Nonconforming Populations Navigating Breast Cancer Health Information, Curtis Shane Tenney, Karl J. Surkan, Lynette Hammond Gerido, Dawn Betts-Green

STEMPS Faculty Publications

In this paper, we use the topic of breast cancer as an example of health crisis erasure in both informational and institutional contexts, particularly within the transgender and gender-nonconforming population. Breast cancer health information conforms and defaults to conventional cultural associations with femininity, as is the case with pregnancy and other “single-sex” conditions (Surkan, 2015). Many health information and research practices normalize sexualities, pathologize non-normative gender (Drescher et al., 2012; Fish, 2008; Müller, 2018), and fail to recognize gender-nonconforming categories (Frohard‐Dourlent et al., 2017). Because breast cancer health information is sexually normalized, an information boundary exists for the LGBTQ+ community, …

Information Activism: A Queer History Of Lesbian Media Technologies, Dawn Betts-Green

STEMPS Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

“When It’S Time To Come Together, We Come Together”: Reconceptualizing Theories Of Self-Efficacy For Health Information Practices Within Lgbtqia+ Communities, Alexander N. Vera, Travis L. Wagner, Vanessa L. Kitzie

Student Publications

This chapter addresses the shortcomings of current self-efficacy models describing the health information practices of LGBTQIA+ communities. Informed by semi-structured interviews with 30 LGBTQIA+ community leaders from South Carolina, findings demonstrate how their self-efficacy operates beyond HIV/AIDS research while complicating traditional models that isolate an individual’s health information practices from their abundant communal experiences. Findings also suggest that participants engage with health information and resources in ways deemed unhealthy or harmful by healthcare providers. However, such practices are nuanced, and participants carefully navigate them, balancing concerns for community safety and well-being over traditional engagements with healthcare infrastructures. These findings have …

“When Someone Sees Me, I Am Nothing Of The Norm”: Examining The Discursive Role Power Plays In Shaping Lgbtq+ Health Information Practices, Vanessa L. Kitzie, Travis L. Wagner, A. Nick Vera

Faculty Publications

This paper examines how discursive power shapes LGBTQ+ community health information practices. Informed by analysis of 10 information world maps drawn by SC LGBTQ+ community leaders, our findings indicate that while community can be a valuable construct to reject mainstream discourses of regulation and correction, it inevitably is fraught and not representative of all LGBTQ+ individuals. Findings can inform strategies for community leaders to facilitate more equitable information flow among members by identifying key structural elements impeding this flow at the community level.

“Being Cute And Hella Gay:" Pokémon Reborn, Fan Labor, And Queering The Pokémon World, David Peter Kocik

Theses and Dissertations

Created in 2012, Pokémon Reborn is a fan game made by and for queer fans of the Pokémon franchise. Featuring an LGBTQ+ development team and multiple queer characters, from pansexual Rival Cain to gender non-binary Gym Leader Adrienn, Pokémon Reborn articulates queer desires in a franchise and gaming industry notorious for ignoring and dehumanizing queer individuals. While most research on independent queer game development focuses on how creators subvert heteronormative gameplay elements, Pokémon Reborn challenges dominant industry practices through its queer characters and stories. The fan game incorporates LGBTQ+ lived experiences and queer temporalities in its narrative, queering the traditional …

Centring Lgbt2qia+ Subjects In Knowledge Organization Systems, Julia Bullard, Amber Dierking, Avi Grundner

Scholarly Papers and Articles

This paper details two interdependent knowledge organization projects for an LGBT2QIA+ library. The authors, in the context of volunteer library work for an independent library, redesigned the classification system and subject cataloguing guidelines to centre LGBT2QIA+ subjects. We discuss the priorities of creating and maintaining knowledge organization systems for a historically marginalized community and address the challenge that queer subjectivity poses to the goals of knowledge organization. The classification system features a focus on identity and physically reorganizes the library space in a way that accounts for the multiple and overlapping labels that constitute the currently articulated boundaries of this …

Queer Political Organization In Israel, And Palestine: Shifting Away From Homonationalism, Tristan Blaisdell

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In this project, I present research I have done on the issue of pink washing queer Israeli and Palestinian citizens and homonationalism within Israel and Palestine. I also create an exhibit brief outlining a hypothetical museum exhibit on this topic to be put up at the museum of culture and environment. The first section outlines the history and theory of my exhibit, and a brief personal statement where I talk about my interest in the subject and where I’m coming from before I design this exhibit. My theory is built off concepts of diaspora, home, belonging, queer identity, and intersectionality …

Going Beyond Book Displays: Providing Safe Spaces For Lgbtq Youth, Lisa Gay-Milliken, Jeffrey Discala

STEMPS Faculty Publications

School libraries should be a space where students of all ages feel welcome and safe. I (Lisa) can speak from experience when I say this is not always the case, not in the 1980s and not today. Even in the school library, a place I now cherish, I was fearful of ridicule and harassment. I was frustrated because I did not see myself—a young, questioning, and confused lesbian—in any of the books. Gay and lesbian characters didn’t exist on those high school shelves. “But that was the 1980s,” you say. It hasn’t gotten much better for much of the LGBTQ …

“In The Beginning, It Was Little Whispers...Now, We’Re Almost A Roar”: Conceptualizing A Model For Community And Self In Lgbtq+ Health Information Practices, Vanessa Kitzie, Travis L. Wagner, Alexander N. Vera

Faculty Publications

Although LGBTQ+ populations experience significant health challenges, little research exists that investigates their health from an informational perspective. Our study addresses this gap by exploring the health information practices of LGBTQ+ communities in South Carolina, focusing on how sociocultural context shapes these practices. Thirty semi-structured interviews with South Carolina LGBTQ+ community leaders analyzed using open qualitative coding informed the development of a conceptual framework describing their information practices. Findings show that participants engaged in two broad types of practices – protective and defensive – as responses to risks and barriers experienced, which are in turn produced by social and structural …

Review Of Retroactivism In The Lesbian Archives, Jolie Braun

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Retroactivism in the Lesbian Archives: Composing Pasts and Futures considers how materials documenting lesbian life and culture can impact identity, shape narratives, and build community. This review provides an overview of each chapter and thoughts on author Jean Bessette’s ideas about archives and archival work.

Trans-Inclusive Design, Erin White

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

The choices web designers make impact the online and offline experiences of real people who are transgender, non-binary, or gender-variant—choices that can affirm or exclude, uplift or annoy, help or harm. This article shines light on the decisions web professionals make every day and offers specific ideas for how to make content, images, forms, databases, IA, privacy, and algorithms trans-inclusive.

Development And Implementation Of An Lgbt Initiative At A Health Sciences Library: The First Eighteen Months, Jessica Petrey

Faculty Scholarship

Background: The University of Louisville School of Medicine is the pilot site for the eQuality project, an initiative to integrate training for providing care to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) patients into the standard medical school curriculum. Inspired by and in support of this School of Medicine initiative, Kornhauser Health Sciences Library staff have developing our own initiative. Because of past and current lack of competent provider training and the resulting need for patients to be knowledgeable self-advocates, however, our initiative was broadened to include the goal of providing LGBT individuals in our communities—both on campus and in the …

Resituating Public Library Values To Leverage The Health Information Practices Of South Carolina Lgbtq+ Communities, Vanessa Kitzie, Travis L. Wagner, Alexander N. Vera, Valerie A. Lookingbill

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

We Try To Find Something For Whatever Obstacle Might Be In Our Way": Understanding The Health Information Practices Of South Carolina Lgbtq+ Communities, Vanessa Kitzie, Travis L. Wagner, Valerie A. Lookingbill, Alexander N. Vera

Faculty Publications

Title: “We Try to Find Something for Whatever Obstacle Might be in Our Way”: Understanding the Health Information Practices of South Carolina LGBTQ+ Communities Objective: LGBTQ+ people experience health disparities compared to heterosexual, cisgender peers. Individual and systemic barriers produe these disparities. One barrier is informational, as LGBTQ+ people experience challenges when learning about their health needs, navigating the healthcare system, and overcoming obstacles to care. This paper investigates the future of libraries and the health sciences by exploring how they can address these informational barriers. Methods: This paper reports on ~30 ongoing interviews with LGBTQ+ community leaders from South …

"Like Two Beach Umbrellas Put Together": Investigating The Health Information Practices Of South Carolina Lgbtq+ Communities, Vanessa Kitzie, Travis L. Wagner, Valerie A. Lookingbill, Alexander N. Vera

Faculty Publications

This poster presents initial findings from an exploratory, qualitative study investigating the health information practices of LGBTQ+ communities in South Carolina (SC). Significant health disparities exist between LGBTQ+ people and their cisgender, heterosexual counterparts. An important but under-researched barrier producing disparities is informational, as LGBTQ+ people face challenges in learning about their healthcare needs, navigating the healthcare system, and overcoming barriers to care. This study addresses research gaps via the following questions: 1) How do LGBTQ+ communities create, seek, share, and use health information?, and 2) What social and structural factors affect these health-related information practices?Findings are informed by ~30 …

Building And Maintaining Lgbtq+ Picture Book Collections, Alissa Droog, Danielle Bettridge, Alyssa R. Martin, Ashleigh Yates-Mackay

FIMS Publications

The LGBTQ+ community has had to continuously fight for their rights, including their right to be represented in the library. This toolkit provides instruction on how to develop and manage a library collection of LGBTQ+ children’s picture books. It is split into four sections that include a guide to evaluating materials, recommended picture books, a guide to fighting censorship, and a list of recommended resources.

Review Of Nonbinary Gender Identities: History, Culture, Resources, Chris Babits

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

McNabb introduces the definitions, histories, and cultures of nonbinary individuals and provides scholars, archivists, librarians, and teachers with an array of resources to research the history and contemporary experiences of nonbinary people. Although the text privileges gender variance in Western nations and could have included more on gender theory, McNabb offers a strong introduction to the topic of nonbinary gender identities. Researchers will especially appreciate the comprehensive list of resources.

Toward Culturally Competent Archival (Re)Description Of Marginalized Histories, Annie Tang, Dorothy Berry, Kelly Bolding, Rachel E. Winston

Library Presentations, Posters, and Audiovisual Materials

Influenced by the radical archives movement, panelists discuss their (re)processing projects for which they wrote or rewrote descriptions in culturally competent approaches. Their case studies include materials regarding underrepresented peoples and historically oppressed groups who are marginalized from or maligned in the archival record. Targeted to processors, this session aims to teach participants to apply their cultural competencies in writing finding aids through an introduction to cultural competency framework, the case study examples, and a short audience-participation exercise.

Lgbtq+ Children’S Picture Books In Ontario Public Libraries, Ashleigh Yates-Mackay, Danielle Bettridge, Alissa Droog, Alyssa Martin

FIMULAW

Diverse representation in picture books is important for the wellbeing of children and families; this includes LGBTQ+ representation, a frequently contested area of literature. Our poster identifies 33 of the most frequently recommended picture books with LGBTQ+ representations and reports on their inclusion in 40 selected Ontario Public Libraries. We then compared these results with five socioeconomic factors for each library: size of population served, the size of the print collection, the size of the materials budget, the average total median household income and the last decade of provincial election results for the riding in which the main branch of …

Gender-Inclusive Library Workgroup Report, Erin White, Donna E. Coghill, M. Teresa Doherty, Liam Palmer, Steve Barkley

VCU Libraries Task Force Reports

The Gender-Inclusive Workgroup explored how VCU Libraries can better serve trans and gender-nonconforming users and staff. The group’s recommendations cover library spaces, staff, systems, services, and culture. Key recommendations include highlighting existing all-gender restrooms; building more gender-inclusive restrooms; expanding availability of menstrual products and disposal bins; continuing support for name-of-use changes in library systems; minimizing display of legal name in library systems; offering ongoing staff training in gender-inclusive language and customer service; and encouraging staff to share pronouns. The workgroup also recommends pursuing a culture of shared learning and inclusive thinking, with a reminder that gender identity is one facet …