NYC, 1919: Perched on a towering pile of donated books, a librarian calls from a megaphone to request more book donations for American troops stationed in France. The American Library Association’s campaign sent up to 55,000 books each month to military camp libraries.

via Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsca.40926/

#archivespelunking #books #bookstodon

archive spelunking. via Don Pedro Presents: Politics and Protest (https://archive.org/details/donpedropresents0000magi).

#ArchiveSpelunking

Halloween Postcards, ca. 1900–1920

A collection of Halloween postcards produced in the so-called “golden age” of picture postcards.

The Public Domain Review

Soulellis’ talk, however, features a much better photo of this very same terminal at Leopold's Records in Berkeley, CA, likely taken at the same time based on the outfit of the person featured in both shots!

The talk, which focuses on community and archives and collaborative art and resistance, has some really interesting throughlines with some of the things I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.

https://soulellis.com/umkc/

#archives #ArchiveSpelunking #LGBThistory

Paul Soulellis

Paul Soulellis is an artist and educator based in Providence, RI. His practice includes teaching, writing, and experimental publishing, with a focus on queer methodologies, network culture, and archival justice. He is the founder of Queer.Archive.Work, a non-profit organization that supports artists, writers, and activists with access to space, tools, and other resources for queer publishing. He is also Department Head and Associate Professor of Graphic Design at Rhode Island School of Design.

Serendipitously, while researching this article I came across a March 2024 talk about “Survival By Sharing” by Paul Soulellis , which features a photograph of a Community Memory terminal.

I'd come across some photos of these while looking for public domain photos of computers a couple weeks ago, and was disappointed at the time that I couldn't find a better photo than ones like this on Wikimedia Commons (derived from a scan of a 1974 newsletter):

#archives #ArchiveSpelunking #LGBThistory

Happy Labor Day. I wrote a Wikipedia article about the gay, anarchist, anti-profit publishing collective Come!Unity Press (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Come!Unity_Press) after stumbling across a poster they printed in 1971.

https://hachyderm.io/@molly0xfff/113058501401683021

#archives #ArchiveSpelunking #LGBThistory

Come!Unity Press - Wikipedia

Today’s archive spelunking led me down a rabbit hole trying to learn more about the “Gay Revolution Networker” mentioned in this graphic.

https://www.mollywhite.net/micro/entry/gay-is-angry

#ArchiveSpelunking #LGBT #LGBThistory

Gay is angry

Today’s archive spelunking led me down a rabbit hole trying to learn more about the “Gay Revolution Networker” mentioned in this graphic. The “Gay is Angry” poster is from the Library of Congress’s Yanker Poster Collection, but the LOC provides no further information on the GRN. Some research by Langdon Manor Books into a flier in their catalog suggests that the Gay Revolution Networker was a New York City-based gay collective, which held meetings at locations including the Washington Square Church and the Come!Unity Press, a gay anarchist collective and print shop in New York City that I want to learn more about. This flier — itself a fascinating piece, described by Langdon as “a gorgeous enigma” — advertises a meeting for the GRN, but also includes on the opposite side an essay by a person named Velvet, which denounces the Gay Activist’s Alliance as sexist and complacent, and notes “the part about sexism goes for GRN too”. while fighting a superficial battle against anti-gay discrimination, they affirm---through a convenient ignorance or complacency---their own discriminatory, unwritten policies against poor people, transvestites, and anyone defying the stereo-type role-playing which has become a trademark of the gay activists alliance. it is significant and tragic that the people who supervise things at the firehouse do a commendable job at examining the sexism of the straight community while refusing to examine or even acknowledge their own sexism. such has been the latest development in the straight-identified gay civil rights movement. naturally, gaa rejects the whole concept of a sexual revolution whereby those who have at least attempted to develop their own consciousness about sexism will be the new guiding force for gays coming out, the young people who must no longer be faced with the closety rhetoric of an organization that represents a dying consensus---the one that says its OK to be a superficial faggot as long as you polish, with diligent secrecy, your lambda button.......... the course of the gay movement is taking on a new sense of liberation these days. at last, there are people who are willing to recognize the whole spectrum of internal and external oppression, sexism from within and without, from you and me---and at last, we shall attempt radical change (revolution) within ourselves, perhaps the most challenging and important revolutionary action of our lives.---Velvet. I wonder what else can be found about Velvet.

Molly White

"Drawing shows an airship "Cures d'air" supporting the "Pension Bellevue" for individuals requiring medical care and floating above a mountainous region. One of the artist's conceptions for his book on life in the upcoming twentieth century."

Published in: Le vingtième siècle / Albert Robida. Paris : G. Decaux, 1883, facing p. 353. Via the Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/item/2002735683/).

#ArchiveSpelunking