Danielle Cooper, Toronto, Canada: “’Big Gay Library:’” An exploratory ethnography of the Pride Library at the University of Western Ontario”

"I observed that the archives were not only valued by users for the information they housed, but also for providing a welcoming, social environment that fosters information exchanges of a less material nature."

The Pride Library at the University of Western Ontario

Danielle Cooper is a doctoral student at the School of Gender, Feminist and Women's Studies at York University. At the LGBTI ALMS 2012 she will present on LGBTI archives and libraries as spaces that are not only notable sites for collecting, organizing and disseminating information but also provide room for socializing, networking and community building. We publish the introduction of her master thesis “’Big Gay Library:’” An exploratory ethnography of the Pride Library at the University of Western Ontario” in which she focusses on the Pride Library in London, Canada that she describes as a refuge from the rather conservative University of Western Ontario and the surrounding city.

What do you think about Danielle Cooper's observation that LGBTI archives are also valued for "providing a welcoming, social environment that fosters information exchanges of a less material nature."? How do you think could this aspect of archives and libraries be further increased?

To read Danielle Cooper's introduction to her thesis click "read more". If you would like to read her whole thesis click on the link provided at the end of the document. 

Joseph Hawkins, ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, Los Angeles, USA: From Community Collection to Professional Archiv, es: A Journey

"History is written by those who save the records; our archival institutions must collect, protect and make available those records, because otherwise an important part of the human experience will disappear."  

Photo of the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives

Joseph Hawkins is the current Director of the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the University of Southern California Libraries, the oldest active LGBTIQ organization in the United States and the largest collection of LGBTQ materials in the world. In this essay, he shares his fifteen years of experience and discusses the transition of the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives from a community collection to a professional archive that cooperates with other institutions in the region, organizes exhibitions and events and hosts more than "7,000 posters, 12,500 videotapes and films, 40,000 books, 9,800 periodical titles and 150,000 buttons, stickers, and other kinds of ephemera".

What do you think about Joseph Hawkins' claim that a "the role of a queer archive should be to preserve the histories of a movement for social equality and not to participate in radical or even moderate activist efforts"? What other insights can you draw from his extensive experience? 

E.G. Crichton, GLBT Historical Society, San Francisco, USA: Migrating Archives

"What is absent is sometimes just as powerful as what can be found tangibly in the archive box or folder."

Photo of one of E.G Crichton's former exhibitions: Lineage: Matchmaking in the Archive II in San Francisco

The LGBTI ALMS 2012 will not only consist out of paper presentations but also involve creative projects. As an Artist-in-Residence at the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco E. G. Crichton is inviting you to participate in her art project Migrating Archives.  Please contribute and help her "to create a kind of collective portrait of people who cannot be there, people we want to remember." 

To keep on reading about Migrating Archives please click "read more".