The Irish Times: National Library announces year-long LGBTI+ programme. “A year-long programme exploring Irish LGBTI+ identity and experiences over the last several decades to the present has been announced by the National Library of Ireland (NLI). It includes a physical and online exhibition of the work of activist Christopher Robson as well as a number of LGBTI+ online events.”
Fyne Times: Queer Heritage South Launches Digital Museum. “As museums across the country await reopening, Queer Heritage South are thrilled to launch an extensive new Queer Heritage South Digital Museum this month. Queer Heritage South is where LGBTQ+ heritage can be preserved, sourced and celebrated. This is not just a collection of exhibits but a comprehensive LGBTQ+ archive that the community of Brighton and beyond are invited to contribute to, enjoy and share.”
City University of New York: From Newsletter to Scholarly Record: Unveiling the CLAGSNews Digital Archive . “Join members of CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies and the Mina Rees Library for an unveiling of 35 years of scholarship now publicly accessible, downloadable, and shareable across the world, in the CUNY Academic Works repository. The digital CLAGS Archive illustrates the impact of queer scholarship from the oldest LGBTQ Research Center in the United States, as well as its ongoing alliance with a university library.”
ITV: ‘I wanted a space where we could represent, honour and celebrate black queer life in the UK’. “The project, launched in LGBT+ History Month, documents the lives of black queer people in Britain from the 1950s to 2000 and already has a following of thousands.” Instagram-based, a bit limited at the moment.
Colorado Virtual Libraries: LGBTQ History Now Included in CHNC. “The Colorado State Library (CSL) and History Colorado (HC) are excited to announce the addition of the first 15 years, 1976 to 1991, of OUT FRONT Magazine to the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection (CHNC).”
Spotted on Reddit: the Bifrost Database of Gay Comic Characters. It’s a bit more than that – one of the ways you can search is by identity, which includes transgender, asexual, and pansexual (though not demisexual.) From the front page: “Created by comic book researchers at Trinity University, the Bifrost Database indexes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, pansexual, and asexual comic book characters featured by the top three American comic book publishers: Marvel, DC, and Image Comics. Our goal is to showcase the growing number and improving representation of gay characters in comic books. The site will continue to grow as we add more and more character pages to the database.”
The Hill: How VR is bringing Black history to life for middle schoolers across America. “It’s a lot easier to bring down a statue than it is to put one up. But the Movers and Shakers of NYC found a way to cut through some of the red tape using a piece of technology most Americans have in their pockets. Using augmented reality, a new app allows students, teachers and the general public to learn Black history and pay tribute to the people who are often left out of textbooks. In addition to a catalog of monuments to women, people of color and the LGBT community, the Kinfolk app contains a digital archive of Black, Indigenous and Latin history.”
CBC: Archive brings history of Nova Scotia’s aging LGBT community to life. “Researchers at Dalhousie University in Halifax are creating an archive of materials relating to the LGBT community in Nova Scotia dating back to the mid-1900s. Jacqueline Gahagan, lead researcher on the project, said living in Halifax where there’s a naval base and a strong military presence made the creation of the archive even more important because many LGBT people in that era were kicked out of the military after being outed.”
WLRN: Stonewall National Museum & Archives Gets Money To Go Digital. “The Stonewall National Museum & Archives is digitizing the LGBTQ history it’s been collecting for nearly 50 years — a dream that started before the pandemic but is even more urgent now. The Fort Lauderdale museum received a $50,000 dollar grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to begin the process to put its archives online.”
IGN: The Strong Museum of Play Houses Newly Donated LGBTQIA Video Games Collection. “The collection includes articles, websites, blogs, web forums, videos, images, instances of representation (including homophobia and transphobia), relationships and more, and lives both in the museum as a research aid and publicly online. The collection, boasting 1,290 games, features titles such as The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, Super Mario Brothers, Fallout, and The Sims, and many more you may not have ever heard of.” I mentioned the original launch of this archive in 2016 but it sounds like it grew a bit before moving to its new home.
Sahan Journal: As a teen, J.P. Der Boghossian didn’t know any queer Armenians. Finally, in his 30s, he found them in books—and started his own library.. “Der Boghossian, now 39, launched the Queer Armenian Library: an online archive of literature, film, music, and art offerings by and about queer Armenians. The blog, which went live at the end of November, includes a synopsis of each work, reviews, film trailers, and instructions about where a reader can find the original material.”
The Caribbean Commons: Upcoming Event: The Jamaica Gaily News Archive Launch. “The Jamaica Gaily News (JGN) was the publication of the first gay activist organization in the anglophone Caribbean, the Gay Freedom Movement (GFM) in Jamaica. Join us as we celebrate the launch of the JGN archive at the Digital Library of the Caribbean. We will hear from the following panelists as they share their reflections on this moment in Jamaica’s history.” (Friday, November 20th, 2020 from 1:00-3:00pm (EST))
Bay Area Reporter: Exclusive: Silicon Valley LGBTQ history website goes live. “The website is debuting ahead of LGBTQ History Month in October. The virtual Queer Silicon Valley exhibition includes archival documents, personal narratives, photographs, interviews, and videos of the LGBTQ+ community in Santa Clara County.”
Internet Archive: The Legend of GayBlade. “The recently released video game documentary High Score includes a sequence in the third episode about a game called GayBlade. GayBlade is one of the first commercially-sold LGTBQ-themed video games, a role-playing romp for Windows and Macintosh occasionally referred to as ‘Dungeons and Drag Queens’. Once thought to have been lost, the game’s software was recently discovered and preserved—and is now available in the Internet Archive!”
Condé Nast Traveler, with a thanks to Esther S.: This New Map Is Digitizing LGBTQ+ Travel Guides from the ’60s and Beyond. “In 1964, California businessman Bob Damron was filling a void. A frequent traveler himself, he began publishing his guides annually as a way to help queer individuals, particularly gay men, navigate both their hometowns and unfamiliar spaces (similar to the earlier Negro Motorist Green Book, which aided Black travelers). Damron’s guides, colorful and discreet, listed known queer haunts across the U.S., as well as their defining features. Now, [historian Eric] Gonzaba and co-primary investigator Amanda Regan are using Damron’s 1965-1980 books to map historical queer spaces, moving state by state in an effort to understand the trajectory of queer communities and place them in context. Their archival project, titled ‘Mapping the Gay Guides,’ is a collection of digital maps, each covering a year of Damron’s guides.”
