23 August 2020
In the first week of my internship, I was provided with a summary of collections from Jackson State University’s Margaret Walker Center. The archivist curated a list of four collections in response to IHP—one was the archives’ namesake, author, and director of The Institute for the History, Life and Culture of Black People, and the other three were identified as gay men, two of them prominent writers and academics. My task was to review the publicly-facing information to see if there was more information about these collections, identify any descriptive metadata, and figure out what additional questions we may need to ask the archivist.
This first step into searching archival inventories for LGBTQ community members and topics was frustrating. I expected difficulty—the point of the Invisible Histories Project after all is to bring hidden collections to light and provide a path toward more inclusive preservation of materials. I formulated a plan to scan the website and use the text search function to identify keywords in the finding aids. One finding aid had a section for research subject headings, which provided the only LGBTQ metadata in the four identified collections—"African American gays.” Even in this collection, there was no mention of specific materials other than publications and books in the creator’s collection on LGBTQ topics. These materials may have marginalia or notes.
Confirming LGBTQ community membership through outside sources was also difficult. Erin Baucom (2018) discusses a few reasons why archival research on LGBTQ individuals and topics can be so difficult, including self-censoring, families cleaning out materials before donating them, and even archivists steering clear of using identifying terms. The historic period for two of the creators identified by the Archivist as gay men coincide with an era where LGBTQ individuals may have hidden their activities and identities. Jackson State University is a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) and the important role of the church, period, and region may all contribute to erasing or not including mentions in biographical notes on the creators of their LGBTQ identification.
Baucom’s (2018) study on LGBTQ access terms provided some guidance by suggesting reviews of subject guides and using regional terms identified through LGBTQ historical collections. Her study found that archives may be likely to be behind the times in using subject headings such as Gays and Lesbians as broader terms than the spectrum of gender identity and sexual orientation may recommend. She also discussed the importance the historical period plays in creators’ self-identification. This project will require me to be flexible, and this week I felt my inexperience in both researching queer subjects and being unfamiliar with HBCU and Black culture. Not knowing names or organizations that are commonly known to be LGBTQ but not explicitly states as such in descriptive inventories made me look to outside sources.
In addition to reviewing the Margaret Walker Center’s website with scope notes and the four findings aids identified by the archivist, I also searched Jackson State University’s library catalog. Some of the collections could not be found with a title search and the ones that were had brief entries with no authority terms. I’m wondering if I should review all the available finding aids, but I feel that the archivist provided more knowledge than the finding aids revealed of known, and in one case openly gay, creators. My reading for Archival Theory provided some useful resources in finding archives and collections and in crafting inquiries for reference services (Arp, 2019), which will likely come in handy as I move on to other repositories. For now, I have a spreadsheet to document my research and provide a strategic workflow and I am reading relevant resources to get a clue. Out of the Closet, Into the Archives: Research Sexual Histories is a collection of essays (2015) that I am excited to read and expect will be helpful.
References and Supplemental Readings
Arp, C. (2019). Archival Basics: A practical manual for working with historical collections.
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Baucom, E. (2018). An Exploration into Archival Descriptions of LGBTQ Materials. The American
Archivist, 81(1), 65-83.
Cantrell, J. (2015). Ch. 13 – Subscribe to Feminary! In Amy L. Stone and Jamie Cantrell (eds.), Out
of the Closet, Into the Archives: Researching Sexual Histories. Pp. 311-335. Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press.