5 GLBT Libraries on LibraryThing

Use these links to check out the collections in 5 GLBT Libraries around the country.

Pittsburgh: http://www.librarything.com/profile/GLCC

St. Paul: http://www.librarything.com/profile/Quatrefoil_library

Indianapolis: http://www.librarything.com/profile/ChrisGonzalezLibrary

Dallas: http://www.librarything.com/profile/LibraryRCDallas

Chicago: http://www.librarything.com/profile/leatherarchives

There are many more and I’ll add more links soon.

Fun sites for readers

Here are a couple of web sites that libraries and readers should follow. One is exclusively queer and the other is straight as an arrow. Both have great reviews and comments about books.

Homepage

http://thebrowser.com/

Check out the 5 Books link at the Browser.

Leaving a Legacy: Who are you remembering in your will?

As a queer reader you probably have a sizable GLBT collection of books, magazines and video/DVDs in your home. What will happen to your library when you have to downsize or when you die? Will your partner or family toss the books into the recycling bin? Do you have books, magazines and DVD’s that you don’t want your family to sort through? How will they know that you want it to be given to your local GLBT Library? (If I died tomorrow what don’t I want my kid to find? Yikes!)

Keith Chiodo and Steve Zupic are downsizing and they decided to donate to the GLCC Library.

“As Keith and I have been rooting through our collection of GLBT sci-fi and fantasy, mystery and history, memoirs and biography, there are more than a few books that we are having trouble parting with.  So many are tied to particular moments and memories in our lives. As much as we may resist parting with them, we realize that to cling to them would be incredibly selfish.  Some of these rarely available books would be locked away in our home; hidden from kids hungry for our history and literature; concealed from 30-something lesbian housewives craving to break loose from their hetero marriages;  denied to other aging queers who once owned a few of these titles and can now be given a chance to discover them anew.  As our lives progress we have no reasonable choice other than to donate them to the  GLCC Library.”

I’ve had a chance to look through the books that Steve and Keith are donating.  We’ll be adding 100’s of books many of which are not available in any other Pittsburgh area library.

The GLCC Library, Community Center and our members will benefit if, like Keith and Steve, you remember us in your will. If you need to downsize please DONATE; don’t TOSS.

If your GLBT collection is shelved “in the closet” we can help you out there too. You can quietly donate to the GLCC Library and no one else will be the wiser. Libraries are all about confidentiality and we can incorporate your books into our collections with or without acknowledging you publicly as the donor.

The GLCC Library doesn’t need another copy of Tales of the City or And Band Played On but there is lots of unique stuff shelved away in your home library. You can help preserve the rare and unusual materials by ensuring that the “good” stuff ends up in a GLBT library?  We will find a good home for anything you donate that we already have so don’t’ worry about giving us duplicate copies of books.

If you are in Pittsburgh your nearest GLBT Library is in the GLCC at 210 Grant Street.  If you’re not from Pittsburgh your local GLBT Library may be in a gay and lesbian community center, church or synagogue. Many local universities have a GLBT research collection. If you need help in finding the best library to place your collection contact me. I can help you with this.

I hope I have made you think about what you’ll do with your old books and other GLBT materials. You can be part of preserving GLBT literature, eye candy and history by becoming a library donor.

About the GLCC Library.

The GLCC Library of Pittsburgh is located in the GLCC at 210 Grant Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15219. (412) 422-0114.  The collection contains over 5,000 books, DVDs, audio CDs and magazines by, for and about the GLBT community.  Almost everything circulates from 2 to 4 weeks for free.  The Library is run by a dedicated group of volunteers.  If you would like to help contact us via the GLCC web page, the Library’s Face Book page or at the phone number above.

GLBT Lit: Is It Widely Available?

I’ve been working on a project to help determine how widely available GLBT literature is in private (in home) and public library collections. I’m using the collection at the GLCC of Pittsburgh Library (4,800 books) as a base to start my “research”. It’s fairly easy to do some of the collection analysis since everything has been entered into LibraryThing.

From our LibraryThing entries I can see how many other libraries and individuals have collected the same titles and which titles have been scanned or loaded into the Google Books Project. A couple more clicks does a WorldCat search and I can see how many libraries worldwide own each title. If the item is owned by another local library (Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh or the University of Pittsburgh Library System) I’m indicating that as well.

The GLCC Library collection is pretty evenly divided between fiction/literature and non-fiction so the analysis will have a good mix of different types of books. Every book added since January 2011 (163 books) has been analyzed and I’ve done another 1,300 or so that were added previously.

For the most part I can say that GLBT literature is fairly widely held and based on the other local library’s holdings it’s well represented in Pittsburgh. Of the titles analyzed so far:
513 are not owned by either of the other local libraries. (GLCC collection only)
728 are owned by the University of Pittsburgh
605 are owned by the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
630 have at least a partial view in Google Books

I’m going to continue with this phase of analysis for a while then tackle a second phase that will deal with the rare items that are not widely held by libraries on OCLC and LibraryThing. We have many books in our collection that I can’t find on OCLC. That doesn’t necessarily mean that no one has them but if I can’t find them on OCLC not many users could.

I’m proving the old adage that “librarians like to search and users want to find” is true. Only the most determined user could find some of this stuff.

Hello world!

We’re here, we’re queer, we collect and we read.