Course:ARST575K/LIBR539H/Dr. John P. De Cecco Archives and Special Collections of the GLBT Historical Society

Dr. John P. De Cecco Archives and Special Collections
Organization Logo
Abbreviation	GLBTHS-SA
Affiliation	GLBT Historical Society
Focus	SF Bay Area LGBTQ+ Communities
Location	989 Market Street, Lower Level San Francisco, CA 94103
Website	https://www.glbthistory.org/archives

The Dr. John P. De Cecco Archives and Special Collections of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society (GLBTHS) is located in San Francisco, CA.

Community Background and Relationship with the Archives

The overall goal of the GLBTHS is to acquire and make accessible a diverse array of records and artifacts pertaining to the history of LGBTQ+ culture and peoples. The San Francisco Bay Area has a long history of LGBTQ+ activism and culture, so the archives is particularly interested in preserving the records of queer organizations and individuals who have ties to the San Francisco Bay Area and Northern California.

As has been noted about the origins of many community archives, where the community comes together to actively create the repository by and for themselves, the GLBTHS was founded by members of the SF LGBT community in 1985 to create a group that would document and promote understanding of their history. Early on, it started accepting collections from community members and organizations who trusted the society to preserve their materials. The first employee of the society, hired in 1995, was an archivist, Paula Jabloner.

In addition to acting as a communal record of LGBTQ+ people in Northern California, the seminal nature of many of the activist organizations and individuals that came from California who have donated their papers to the Society means that the archives also holds special importance to the LGBTQ+ community at large. Individuals such as Gilbert Baker, who designed the original LGBTQ rainbow flag, have donated their fonds to the Dr. John P. De Cecco Archives and Special Collections. The records of the groundbreaking Mattachine Society are also housed at the GLBTHS archives.

As the Society has expanded, it has continued to remain very much in the hands of local activists and community members. In line with the observation that community archives involve community members in their decision making processes, the GLBTHS archives has established volunteer working groups within its decision-making structures, which work in advisory and operational roles. The number or structure of these working groups changes as a result of people moving in and out of the city or with general attrition. Right now, the working groups consist of one former archivist, three current employees, and one ex-board member who is an archivist elsewhere.

The researchers visiting GLBTHS are almost all queer and a surprisingly high percentage of them travel from outside the Bay (maybe a third, in non-pandemic times when they actually host researchers in the archives). Most of the long-distance visitors are academics from elsewhere in the United States, but periodically they have a booking from Europe or Asia. There's some pattern to why people visit -- the Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin Papers, José Sarria Papers, Lou Sullivan Papers, and Don Lucas Papers are the four flagship physical collections -- but just as often as one of the big four, they receive visit requests for other collections.

Holdings

The archives acquires, processes, preserves, and provides access to extensive holdings of materials pertaining to LGBTQ+ people, occupying more than 3,500 linear feet of storage, which is over 900 collections of personal papers, organizational records, periodicals, oral histories, photographs, audiovisual recordings, ephemera, artifacts, and works of art.

Due to its geographic location and origins, the archives particularly focuses on collecting the materials of individuals and organizations with connections to San Francisco and Northern California. It notes that it is particularly interested in “material that documents underrepresented areas” in order to reflect the full diversity of the LGBTQ+ communities of Northern California.

An interesting note for the archives’s appraisal activities is that the collections policy is directly affected by the archives’s position as counterpart to the museum, stating that the archivists are particularly interested in materials that fit the mission of the GLBTHS and also that have particular value for exhibition purposes.

Materials held by the society include important ephemera and non-textual artifacts that greatly help to contextualize the LGBTQ+ experience. The presence of these materials, atypical of a bureaucratic archives but not uncommon in community archives, contribute to the perceived liveliness of the archives, deepen emotional connection between community archives users and the records, and invite new frameworks for scholarly engagement and consideration of the archives.

Organization

The GLBTHS houses three types of collections: archival collection, periodical collections, and oral histories, all of which can all be found on their catalogue.

They currently house 802 physical collections and 27 collections with online items. Their catalogue is organized alphabetically, and they clearly mark collections with online items.

The archives organized their material according to standard archival processing and rehousing. At the moment, they don't use ArchivesSpace or similar software, though there are plans to implement it in coming years; instead, they keep locations and survey information on separate FileMaker Pro databases, which, although cumbersome, works for them at current size. They have just implemented a Digital Asset Management Systems, Islandora, for the first time as their extensive digitized collections had previously just been stored on a hard drive, and this will open the archives up to born-digital items. Oral histories on cassette (soon to be digitized) live in a file cabinet. Some posters live in flat files. Their costume collection is split between racks and large boxes.

Access

COVID-19

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the archives is only accessible online. Because much of their current efforts have centered on digitization and prioritizing universal online access, the archives has a significant portion of their collections available online at as well as through subscriptions to Gale/Cengage. Additional assistance with accessing collections virtually as advertised as being possible if a researcher contacts the archives staff.

Online

The archives provides an online access to its digitized resources, and it is divided into “Digital Collections” and “Primary Source Sets.” In “Digital Collections,” patrons can search thousands of photographs, audiovisual recordings, documents, and periodicals, and the page features numerous fonds/collections which patrons can click on to explore. The “Primary Source Sets” page allows patrons to browse the archives collections via topics, such as “Asian American Voices and Activism,” “Gay Games,” “Gay Men in Military,” “HIV/AIDS,” “Marriage and Commitment” and more. Once patrons select a topic, they can browse and access various collections that are grouped under the topic.

In person

Outside of COVID-19, the archives is open to researchers and the public on an appointment basis.

Patrons are allowed to bring their own writing utensils such as pencils and paper in addition to laptops and a digital camera (must be used without a flash) to the reading room. Food and drinks are prohibited in the reading room. Patrons can leave their belongings in the vestibule, and a kitchen is available for them to have food and water if needed.

For accessing collection with sexually explicit material, patrons must be at least 18 years of age.

Patrons can request duplications of some of the material by filling out Duplications Request Form. However, this process only allows for the use of the material in personal and research use. To use materials for any other purpose, patrons must receive a written consent from both the copyright owner and the GLBTHS. Patrons must also fill out the Request to Use Material in a Publication Form. Fees associated with these services are outlined in both forms.

Programming and Outreach

The archives actively participates in public service and outreach programs, such as hosting numerous school tours and college volunteer days to share queer history with a new generation.

The archives also fulfills loan requests from institutions around the world; as in 2019, it has lent its archival items to the Newseum in Washington D.C., the Oakland Museum of California, the Bundekunsthalle in Bonn, Germany, and the SFO Museum.

The reference archivist at the GLBTHS, periodically gives Zoom talks to students, corporate groups, or other interested folks -- most recently an LGBT retirement community. Under normal circumstances, they often host student groups (high school and undergrads) who come in for a tour and sometimes do a small project for the archives. They also give media interviews and try to take a larger role in the Society's social media such as taking over the Twitter account for Ask an Archivist Day.

The Society has multiple on-going archival projects that primarily focus on digitization for the purpose of providing widespread access to the records and the history they represent.

The projects include:

• Bay Area Reporter Digitization Project, which digitized the complete issues of the Bay Area Reporter (BAR), the oldest and continuously published lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender weekly newspaper in the United States, from 1971 through 2005.
• The San Francisco Bay Area’s Response to the AIDS Epidemic: Digitizing, Reuniting, and Providing Universal Access to Historical AIDS Records, which digitized and provides online access to approximately 127,000 pages from 49 archival collections related to the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the Bay Area.
• Digitizing the Dirk Alphin Collection of Valencia Rose Videotapes, which focuses on digitizing 20 VHS tapes from the Dirk Alphin Collection which includes the recordings of comedy, drag, and other entertainment from 1985 that took place at the Valencia Rose, a San Francisco gay cabaret.

Relationship to GLBTHS Museum

The archives is housed at a separate location from the GLBTHS museum, but it is considered to be a part of the same, overarching institution.

The GLBTHS Museum was established in 2011, and it is believed to be the first stand-alone museum of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender history and culture in the United States. Through exhibitions and programming, the museum showcases the GLBTHS archives to further emphasize on the importance of diversity, social justice, and queer history.

Relationships to other Archives

As a contributing institution to the Online Archives of California (OAC), its finding aids can also be found on the OAC website as well as on the GLBTHS website.

Many of the grant projects that the GLBTHS archives is currently working on involve cooperation between the archives and other repositories in the area or across the nation. For example, The San Francisco Bay Area’s Response to the AIDS Epidemic: Digitizing, Reuniting, and Providing Universal Access to Historical AIDS Records involved not only the GLBTHS archives, but also the Archives and Special Collections department of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the San Francisco Public Library.