Elise Chenier

Reclaiming the Lesbian Archives

Abstract This article suggests ways that Web 2.0 tools can help revive the grassroots democratic imperative of LGBTQ oral history in particular and LGBTQ archives in general by creating paths that allow users to overcome myriad barriers experienced when trying to access resources on university campuses and that facilitate community engagement. Open-access and digital environments encourage collaborative knowledge construction across time and space; thus the digital humanities provide a democratic platform that supports oral history’s antihierarchical and anti-elitist imperatives. One of the major concerns expressed about the current shift of LGBTQ materials from community-based archives to institutional libraries, archives, and special collections is that collections will no longer be shaped by LGBTQ praxis. This article proposes a way to use Web 2.0 affordances to facilitate and encourage robust and ongoing community involvement that will strengthen the connection between archives users and archives managers and will help shape the archives themselves.