Does anyone remember those AOL start up discs we got in the mail every day in the 90’s? Well, for us, those start up discs were a symbol of what could be, in terms of connection with others.
Whether you come from a small town, the suburbs or a bustling big city, sometimes it can be difficult and even impossible to find your tribe, locally. Even before social distancing and self-quarantines, it could be hard sometimes to find friends and acquaintances who shared your values, interests, and identity (or identities, really, since intersectionality is definitely a thing). The internet has long been a place where people find others to share life experience and build connection.
The same goes for libraries throughout history. For some, the library was the first place we went to explore the meaning of the words (or acronyms) that we—or others—used to define us. These days, the wide world of the web is more likely to be the resource that people turn to in order to share life experience and build connections.
The library is still a good resource for the LGBTQIA+ community, though. When our libraries are open, we host Drag Queen Story Hours for families to enjoy. We present our Rainbow Reading Group, where we discuss contemporary and classic LGBTQIA+ fiction and nonfiction. While the libraries are closed to the public right now for the public good, we thankfully still have this online space where we can work to create a similar sense of connection.
We continue to support our community in a variety of ways. Resources are the tools in the librarians’ toolbelt and they aid us in creating connection and enable us to support our community.
To that end, we’d like to offer a few links below. We hope they are helpful. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if there’s anything else we can do—or if there are other resources you think would be good to share.
Stories, memoirs, history and humor by, for and/or about LGBTQ lives in e-book and/or e-audio formats.
Local Resources: