6 research outputs found
Hidden in Plain Sight: Gay and Lesbian Books in Midwestern Public Libraries, 1900���1969
This essay examines the collections of five rural midwestern public
libraries to assess the presence of books with gay and lesbian
content in the pre-Stonewall era. It considers how reviewers writing
for standard library review sources (A.L.A. Catalog, Booklist, and H.
W. Wilson’s Fiction Catalog) described these works. Throughout the
first six decades of the twentieth century, most gay and lesbian titles
remained as closeted in the review sources as did the readers who
sought them. Professional training contributed to a librarian’s willingness
to consider the purchase of such titles, but larger cultural
factors shaped the context in which librarians and reviewers worked.
While there may have been some intentional efforts to prevent such
works from being reviewed, other factors kept books from the shelves,
including the privately printed nature of some works, a library’s
practice of purchasing hardcover rather than paperback books, and
the invisibility of gay and lesbian content to heterosexual reviewers.
Thus, only the most sensational titles or the most innocuous works
tended to find their way to the library’s shelves.published or submitted for publicationOpe