Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies 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how (failed) systematization and an emphasis on large quantities of documents and metadata breathes new life into outdated historiographies and renders documents and information related to feminist and lesbian histories and connections between these histories …

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 …

Show Us Your Omaha: Combating Lgbtq+ Archival Silences, Angela J. Kroeger, Yumi Ohira, Amy Schindler

Criss Library Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

The University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) Libraries offers a variety of unique and specialized collections in the Archives & Special Collections (ASC) for UNO and Omaha community members. In 2015, ASC began planning for preserving and providing access to Omaha’s LGBTQ+ history through the Queer Omaha Archives. Archival silences were defined by archivist Rodney Carter as the manifestation of the actions of the powerful in denying the marginalized access to archives with further definition by archivists and researchers expanding this definition. The UNO Libraries has invested in developing digital engagement as a strategic priority through building infrastructure and expanding …

Queering The Library Of Congress, Carlos R. Fernandez

Works of the FIU Libraries

This poster will attempt to apply the techniques used in Queer Theory to explore library and information science’s use and misuse of library classification systems; and to examine how “queering” these philosophical categories can not only improve libraries, but also help change social constructs.

For millennia, philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle, have used and expounded upon categories and systems of classification. Their purpose is to make research and the retrieval of information easier. Unfortunately, the rules used to categorize and catalog make information retrieval more challenging for some, due to social constructs such as heteronormality.

The importance of this …

Tape-By-Tape: Digital Practices And Cataloguing Rituals At The Lesbian Herstory Archives, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Publications and Research

This essay will outline the digital collections of the Lesbian Herstory Archives with an emphasis on process and workflow. The paragraphs below will describe the efforts put forth by the all- volunteer collective, and their dedication toward making materials accessible through the use of digital technology to preserve, catalog, and exhibit lesbian herstory. Interviews with Archive Coordinators, called “Archivettes”, Rachel Corbman on the Online Public Access Catalog, Saskia Scheffer on Photos, and Maxine Wolfe on Audio, will provide examples of LHA digital practices in the creation and maintenance of the Photo Collection, OPAC, and Audio Tape Digitization projects. Additional mention …

More Cataloging, More Libguide, Hannah R. Leone

Blogging the Library

The way I have unified the LGBTQ titles—all 700-odd of them—is by using a local information field in the catalog. Quick cataloging lesson for you non-librarians: when I talk about subject headings, for example Gay Culture, those go in a field designated by the number 650. This means that it’s a universal, standardized field and that the headings in those fields will be recognized anywhere. For local subject headings, those that are only used within one library (ours, in this case), the field is designated by the number 690. I’m using one of those 690 fields with the heading “LGBTQ …

The Lesbian And Gay Past: An Interpretive Battleground, Polly Thistlethwaite

Publications and Research

The lesbian and gay past is an interpretive battleground that mainstream archives have refused to enter, assuming few risks in collecting, naming, or identifying archival collections. At the same time, libraries offer up worlds to those who work to unearth the secrets there.

The New York Public Library's 1994 "Becoming Visible" exhibit trumpeted The Arrival of lesbian and gay history to New York's cultural mainstream. The NYPL exhibit denies the library's role in secreting lesbian and gay history, and diminished the contributions of community-based archives to the exhibit.

Aids Information In Periodical Indexes: A Problem Of Exclusion, Polly Thistlethwaite

Publications and Research

The lack of attention afforded the gay, lesbian, and alternative press in mainstream periodical indexes has a serious, detrimental impact on the nature of AIDS information available to students of the epidemic. Indexers and database search services must end their policy of excluding the gay/lesbian and other community-based periodicals in order to provide adequate coverage of AIDS information.