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Overview
Schlesinger collections document the lived realities and activism of women, as well as changing societal ideas and laws around sexuality and gender. Since its earliest days the library has actively collected papers documenting lesbian lives, from 19th century diaries of erotically charged female friendships to lesbian political activism and community building in the late 20th century. More recently our collecting focus has encompassed the many expressions of sexuality and gender within the LGBTQ+ communities. In light of this, we want to evaluate and reassess our descriptive practices – both historically and currently -- in order to ensure that how we identify and describe the LGBTQ+ individuals and communities in our collections is both respectful and accurate.
Definitions and background
LGBTQ+ = lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning. The plus refers to other identities/terminologies which fall under the wide umbrella of gender and sexual expressions (e.g. intersex, asexual, genderqueer; nonbinary; genderfluid; pansexual, etc.)
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“Words related to queer and trans identities especially constitute continuous battlegrounds as terms are created, discarded, reclaimed, disputed, etc. The accepted terms today may be offensive tomorrow (in fact, some might contest them now).” Digital Transgender Archive Style Guide
Issues and examples
Below are a selection of descriptive concerns that are relevant to some Schlesinger Library collections. Archivists should be aware of these issues when working with LGBTQ+ collections.
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Item level cataloging of photographs or visual materials can bring up additional questions regarding naming. The photographer Bettye Lane photographed Bruce Jenner in 1977, almost 38 years before Bruce had transitioned to Caitlyn Jenner. Lane's caption on the slide includes Jenner's pre-transition name, "Bruce Jenner 1/10/77." In order to help us determine whether we should retain "Bruce Jenner" in the description for the catalog record, we did research on whether Caitlyn had ever addressed dead naming and her former identity. Since Caitlyn Jenner is a known personality we were able to find online an interview in The Guardian (May 8, 2017) where she states she does not mind being referred to as Bruce, “'I had a life for 65 years. OK?' Besides which, 'I liked Bruce. He was a good person. He did a lot in his life. Oh, ‘he didn’t even exist’. Yes he did exist!...'" Given this information, we kept Lane's caption "Bruce Jenner" and added: "[pre-transition name, as captioned by Bettye Lane in 1977]; 1-10-1977."
When to describe
There are situations where a collection doesn’t contain directly related content about the creator’s sexual or gender identity but the individual does identify under the LGBTQ+ umbrella. For example, The description of the Angela Davis papers does not address her sexuality since the collection does not contain materials directly related to it. Davis has publicly identified as lesbian since 1997. Is identity description always warranted in the creator's biography or in LCSH in order to ensure LGBTQ+ visibility? This is a question we are currently exploring.
Recommendations
- Solicit input about identity from creator/donor of archival collections when possible.
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At the Schlesinger Library, the Manuscripts Department will be documenting how and where to incorporate identity description in finding aids and to help develop language and best practices for creating or updating finding aid description. The Manuscripts Department will also explore and document the best descriptive options for those creators who do not have a clearly stated identity and are no longer living but whose life story can be seen as part of LGBTQ+ visibility.
Resources
[GLBT Controlled Vocabularies and Classification Schemes: https://www.ala.org/rt/rrt/popularresources/vocab ]
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