That gay and lesbian history even exists has been a contested fact, and the struggle to record and preserve it is exacerbated by the invisibility that often surrounds intimate life, especially sexuality. Even the relatively short history (roughly “one hundred years”) of homosexuality as an identity category has created the historiographical challenge of not only documenting the wide varieties of homosexual experience but examining documents of homophobia along with earlier histories of homoeroticism and same-sex relations.
Ann Cvetkovich in An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures, p. 242
See more archival collections on the Interviews & Oral Histories page. See the News Sources page to search for historical evidence about a person, event, movement, cultural artifact, etc. in the press.
Some of the archives listed below have portions of their collections digitized and available online for researchers. Material that has not been digitized is usually available in person. Contact the archivists at these institutions for research help and/or for use of materials in research projects.
The Lesbian and Gay Archives Roundtable of the Society of American Archivists has also compiled the Lavender Legacies Guide, a comprehensive list of LGBTQ collections in the United States and Canada. The Australian Queer Archives has an international list of LGBTIQ+ Archives.