LGBTQ+ Resources

Bishopsgate Institute’s Special Collections and Archives holds one of the most extensive collections on LGBTQ+ history, politics and culture in the UK. It covers the late nineteenth century onward. The collections encompass LGBTQ+ history politics and culture, with archives from Stonewall, Switchboard, GMFA/The Gay Men's Health Charity, Outrage! and material relating to the Terrence Higgins Trust, Achilles Heel and QX magazines. The collections include records of individuals including Paris Lees, Sue Sanders/Schools Out/LGBT History Month and many others.
Bishopsgate are custodians of the Lesbian and Gay Newsmedia Archive (LAGNA). LAGNA includes over 300,000 press cuttings from the straight press regarding LGBTQ+ history from the 1890s to today. The cuttings are organised by subject matter, biographical content and location.
They hold a library of around 10,000 LGBTQ+ titles, from academic works, biographies, fiction and poetry to pulp fiction, along with over 700 journal titles from around the world. The LGBTQ+Pamphlet Collection contains around 1,500 items including programmes for festivals and events, material from campaigning organisations and catalogues. The collection also features extensive ephemera such as club flyers, t-shirts, banners and badges.
The Special Collections and Archives also hosts the UK Leather and Fetish Archives, a national collection documenting the history and heritage of fetish, kink and BDSM in the UK. The archives holds organisational papers, flyers, journals, pamphlets, books and artefacts.

Brighton Ourstory was set up to collect and preserve local lesbian, gay and bisexual history. It ceased to operate in 2013 but an archived version of the website can be accessed via the Wayback Machine.

Funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Brighton Trans*formed records, in their own words, the lives and experiences of Brighton & Hove’s Transgender community. Using writing, memories, oral histories and photography, the project offers a snapshot of the rich variety of Trans lives in Brighton & Hove at a moment of significant change in how the community connects and organises itself.
The project’s contributors range from 18 to 81 years old with very different life experiences. All of their testimonies have in common an absolute honesty and openness: contributors shared their joys and tragedies; adversities faced, and a display of strength and resolve to be themselves.
For over 40 years, QueenSpark Books has been producing books about the people of Brighton & Hove, with a focus on enabling ‘lesser-heard’ voices to tell their stories.

Camp Books aims to embody this legacy of queer textual production and preservation, gathering old texts and documents related to Queer History, making and remaking works anew, broadening access to the past through teaching and publishing, and is open to collaborating with all allies to this cause. Camp Books holds itself accountable to the ideas of the texts it preserves, and aims to archive and thrive in spite of existing forms of oppression. The work Camp Books celebrates and the materials Camp Books assembles and preserves are channelled toward representing those who might otherwise be silenced or erased.

Devil’s Dyke Network is a Brighton-based inclusive platform for poets, performers and artists dedicated to building community and generating positive cultural and political energies. The organizing group consists of artists, filmmakers, and activists.

Access to digitized trans collections from archives and libraries from across the globe. Notably, collections from the Transgender Archives of the University of Victoria, the CLGA, the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection of the University of Minnesota and so many more.

The Feminist Library is a large collection of Women's Liberation Movement literature based in London. A library and community space, the Feminist Library supports research, activist and community projects.

Based in San Francisco (California), the GLBT Historical Society has digitized a selection of its collections and made them freely accessible online.

The LSE LGBT collection contains primary source material mainly relating to gay and lesbian rights. The collection is particularly strong for campaigning from the late 1950s to the 1990s. LSE Library’s main LGBT collection is called the Hall-Carpenter Archives in honour of Radclyffe Hall and Edward Carpenter, although there is no material relating to these two people in this archive.

Into the Outside is a queer youth project creating a new digital archive that shares and celebrates stories from LGBTQ+ young people in Brighton & Hove and beyond.

Queer Archive initiative records, documents, collects and makes visible personal stories, her/histories and actions of LGBTIQA persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This is realized through series of interviews, photographs, audio and video recordings and launch of digital multimedia platform – Queer Archive.

The LGBT Community Center National History Archive is a community-based archive that collects, preserves and makes available to the public the documentation of LGBTQ lives and organizations centered in and around New York. Through our collections, we enable the stories and experiences of New York’s LGBTQ people to be told with historical depth and understanding.

The Lesbian Herstory Archives exists to gather, preserve and provide access to records of Lesbian lives and activities. Doing this also serves to uncover and document our herstory previously denied to us by patriarchal historians in the interests of the culture that they served. The existence of the Archives will thus enable current and future generations to analyze and reevaluate the Lesbian experience.

The LGBT Center of Central PA and the Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections have partnered to document the stories and history of LGBT life and activism in the greater Central Pennsylvania region. This site contains oral histories that have been recorded for the LGBT History Project, as well as fully accessible digital versions of documents, images, and artefacts that have been donated to the project.
This is a quickly growing collection, and not all items are available through this website. Please contact Malinda Triller-Doran at archives@dickinson.edu for information about how to access all of the resources of the LGBT History Project, as well as how to donate additional materials.
Generous support to make these unique resources accessible has been provided by the Schlegel Deibler Charitable Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

The Museum of Transology (MoT) is the UK’s most significant collection of objects representing trans, non-binary and intersex people’s lives.

Queer Heritage South / Queer in Brighton digital community archiving project, celebrating and promoting the rich cultural life of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Intersex, Transgender and Queer (LGBTIQ+) community in Brighton & Hove and the South.

From January 2000 until March 2015 "Queer Music Heritage" was both a radio show and a website, and the goal of both was to preserve and share the music of our culture. It has become the resource on the net for the history of LGBT music. Each month's page gives the playlist and additional pages of info, and you can stream or download every show; there's over 580 hours of programming available. This is a deep site, covering over 2000 pages, including gems such as copies of Vice Versa magazine from the 1940s.

Find out more about Brighton Museum’s exhibition, Queer the Pier, with the exhibition’s Community Curators in this series of online films and extra stories. The Queer the Pier display celebrates the lives of LGBTIQ+ writers, artists, performers, activists – and ordinary people – who’ve made Brighton & Hove so fabulous

The Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP) was first launched in November 2003 in an effort to preserve queer zines and make them available to other queers, researchers, historians, punks, and anyone else who has an interest DIY publishing and underground queer communities.

Queer Zine Library is a roaming diy queer library celebrating radical LGBTQIA+ self-publishing. The library collects LGBTQIA+ zines and provides access to queer communities across the UK. The mobility of the library allows the collections to tour, grow, and change, encouraging access outside of traditional library and research settings, putting queer history and experiences in the hands of our communities.

The archives of rukus! Federation Limited, referred to by rukus! as the 'rukus! Black, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans (BLGBT) cultural archive' consists of collected diaries, letters, minutes and related papers, magazines, pamphlets, flyers, posters, journals, books, photographs and prints, audio-visual material, memorabilia and ephemera. Records relate to individuals including activists, DJs, club promoters, writers, artists and magazine publishers; community organisations; and subjects including sexual heath, black lesbians and women and night clubs. Housed at the London Metropolitan Archives.

Useful if you are interested in the medicalisation of sexuality. They have digitised online collections including an AIDS posters collection and a Sexology collection.