Queer Studies

DTA is a collection of materials from 50 institutions that documents the experiences and history of gender nonconforming and trans people based at the College of the Holy Cross. Curators use transgender as an umbrella term, and provide a glossary of related terminology for researchers, thus creating more entries into the history of trans and gender nonconforming people.

The GLBT Historical Society is both a museum and an archive. They have digitized editions of the oldest continuously published LBGTQ newspaper in the United States, the Bay Area Reporter.

IHP's mission is to preserve and document the experiences of both urban and rural LGBTQ people in the American South.

LHA's mission is to collect and preserve items relating to the lesbian experience. The collecting policy still reflects LHA's founding in that they will take almost anything.

The searchable materials include photos of notable members of the arts community, archives from the AIDS activist art collective Gran Fury, audiovisual materials from the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, and a selection of activist photography, dating from the early Gay Rights marches from the 1960s, as well as finding aids.

The ONE archive is a collection of audio and video, posters, ephemera photographs, periodicals, and personal papers with a concentration on documenting the history of the LGBTQ community in Southern California.

This collection of both primary and secondary source documents that is updated frequently by a community of both scholars and amateur historians. OutHistory was founded in 2008 by historian Jonathan Ned Katz as a digital edition of his canonical work Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. OutHistory is not only a repository of documents, photos, ephemera, oral histories, bibliographies, and articles, it is a superb example of a public history project. Anyone may create content or contribute materials to the collections.

A project of the Society of American Archivists (SAA), Lavender Legacies, is a list of archive collections in the U.S. and Canada. Many of the entries are for small organizations or city-specific archives, which hold collections that are not digitized, but provide contact information for researchers. Lavender Legacies is worth a browse, particularly for regional LGBTQ history. The larger organizations have digital collections linked. This project is valuable because it connects researchers with curators, as well as preserves records.

The ACT-UP Oral History Project documents the history of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP). The movement that changed the face of AIDS in America, ACT-UP/New York, was founded in 1987. It quickly became one of the most influential activist organizations in the world with branches organizing in other major cities.

The Oral History Hub, a project of the LGBTQ Digital Collaboratory at the University of Toronto, provides a diverse list of completed and current LGBTQ oral history projects with a concentration on the United States and Canada. Regions and topics range from gay rodeos, Appalachian Queers, to AIDS activism in major U.S. cities.

This archive’s mission is to collect materials that document the history of LGBTQ religious movements, as well as to encourage their study. The organization also provides advice on best practices for the collection and preservation of items ranging from letters, ephemera, and photographs to stoles and other liturgical items.

In 2014, honoring the 45th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, Story Corps began its OutLoud project. Oral histories on the LGBTQ experience before Stonewall were collected and featured on NPR’s Morning Edition Friday mornings. In 2019, this time in honor of the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, StoryCorps is seeking participants to contribute more recordings about the pre-Stonewall years in order to preserve stories told by LGBTQ elders.

The indispensable Internet Archive is home to the oldest continuously published LGBTQ newspaper in the United States, the Bay Area Reporter. Founded in 1971 and known as B.A.R. until 2011, it was distributed free to patrons of San Francisco bars. The Bay Area Reporter is particularly notable for its reporting on the AIDS/HIV crisis.

Independent Voice is a treasure trove of regional, small press, and activist magazines and newspapers compiled by librarians and scholars who represent a diverse selection of areas of study. It was the first gay-positive magazine available in the United States. The Los Angeles branch of the Daughters of Bilitis’ The Lesbian Tide (holdings: 1974–80) was the first national newspaper for lesbians.

QZAP describes itself as a “labor of love” founded in 2003 to preserve and make available queer zines free of charge to scholars, artists, and general readers. Zines are usually handmade books using techniques such as photocopying or hand printing. Topics range from history, sexuality, and fiction, to name a few.

This is a project in the form of a LibGuide by librarians Jesse Silva at the University of California-Berkeley and Kelly L. Smith of the University of California-San Diego. Using research tools such as CQ and Lexis-Nexis Academic, they have brought together U.S. government documents that trace the history of rights for LGBTQ Americans into one resource.