Nancy and I have been meeting weekly to input the hundreds of journals, magazines, and newsletters the Ohio Lesbian Archives has. Although detailed work, it is necessary to know our holdings.
We’re using Excel to keep it simple and share-able. For now, Nancy is entering the data and I am reading out Volume, Issue, Date, Publisher. I actually have the fun part for I get to glance at the cover and first pages. From time to time, I’ll exclaim, “Oh, look who was published in this early issue of Conditions.” Or, “Did you realize? X has a Cincinnati connection.” And the librarian in me still becomes excited when we discover a Volume 1, Issue 1.
This might sound boring to some of you (if you’ve even made it as far as this paragraph). But archives need to know what we have. And we want to know. We want to know what we’re spending time and resources on saving. I’d like to offer some issues to lesbian archives in other regions of the country, e.g., if we have a newsletter from Oklahoma, then it would be better placed in that state or a collection that covers the western region. We are using our space well in the church basement but we have boxes yet to unpack. Surprises to find, magazines to catalog.
If you live in the greater Cincinnati area, we are happy to involve you. Even an hour sporadically will help. Thanks,
Phebe for the Archives
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