This October we have been honoring and celebrating LGBT History Month by taking a deeper look into the Archives of Sexuality & Gender and learning more about fascinating and often under represented LGBT historical milestones and icons.
In our post “LGBT in America — The Journey Thus Far,” we highlighted some of the most important milestones of LGBT history and linked each one to a captivating primary source document archived in the Archives of Sexuality and Gender.
A major initiative of LGBT History Month is to commemorate the people who have forged the path forward for LGBT rights. Each year 31 lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender Icons are chosen and a different icon is the focus each day of the month. The icons chosen represent the diverse backgrounds of the LGBT community and range from grassroots activists to national leaders. We took a closer look at some of these icons and found engrossing primary source material in the Archives of Sexuality & Gender. You can read more about the inspirational LGBT icons like Essex Hemphill and check out fascinating related primary source material here.
On October 14th, we celebrated the anniversary of the First National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. In our post “Marching Towards Equality,” you can read all about the day’s events and access relevant primary source material such as maps of the march’s path, articles written about the march from LGBT publications, and many photographs from the march.
You can also read about how the functionality of our Gale Primary Sources platform can help make the content in the Archives of Sexuality and Gender more accessible and valuable researchers. Using features like Term Clusters, Cross-Searchability, and Term Frequency researchers can make connections and add context to their research in a whole new way. You can read more about the features available in Archives of Sexuality & Gender here.
As the LBGTQ communities become more visible in society people will be in search for information about the history of those communities from a trustworthy source. Your library can be at the forefront of providing access to rich resources on sexuality with Archives of Sexuality & Gender — 20 individual collections, totaling 1.5 million pages of primary sources. To learn more and request trial access visit www.gale.com/LGBTQM2k Tekno