 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Porter here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. We broadcast the show live at every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time. But if you're unable to join us on Wednesday, that's fine. We do record the show as we are doing this morning. And we do then post it to our Library Commission's YouTube channel for our archives. And I'll show you at the end of today's show where you can access all of our show archives on our website. Both the live show and the recordings are free and open to anyone to watch. So, please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you think might be interested in any of the topics you have on the show. For those of you not from Nebraska, the Nebraska Library Commission is a state agency for libraries, similar to yours, whatever state library. And we provide services to all types of libraries in the state. And we also find shows on Encompass Live for all types of libraries, public academic, K-12, commissioner, archives, corrections, museums, etc. Earlier, our only criteria is that it is something to do with libraries, something that libraries are doing, something you think they could be doing. We do book reviews, interviews, mini training sessions, demos of services and products. We have Nebraska Library Commission staff that sometimes come on the show and do presentations about services and programs we're offering through the state. We also bring in guest speakers as we have this morning. This morning, Drenny is Amy Schindler. Good morning, Amy. Good morning, Kristen. And yeah, she is the director of archives and special collections at the University of Nebraska Omaha, Chris Library, north of Sierra. And she's an Omaha, so we're doing remotely together. And she's going to talk today about the queer Omaha archives. And it says here the first five years because five years ago in 2016, actually Amy was on the show right when this was first opened up. So we were very excited back then to announce that there's this great new archive, there's new resource that we've been put together. And now, Amy, we don't want to talk about what's been happening in those first five years. So go ahead and take it away, Amy. So I would like to begin by acknowledging that the University of Nebraska at Omaha is a metropolitan university with campuses, programs, service learning and community engagement, spread across the past, present and future homelands of the Pawnee, Ponca, Auto, Missouri, Omaha, Dakota, Lakota, Arapaho, Cheyenne and Caw peoples, as well as the relocated Ho-Chunk, Iowa and Sac and Fox people. Please take a moment to consider the legacies of more than a century of displacement, violence, settlement and survival that brings us together here today. At the University of Nebraska at Omaha, we respect and seek out inclusion of differences, realizing that we can learn from each other. And we look forward to building, hopefully continuing to build long lasting relationships with the indigenous people of Nebraska. To learn more about the indigenous native territories and languages where you may be living or located today, I encourage you to visit the native land website that's native-land.ca. And for my fellow Nebraskans out there, I want to remind us that October 11th will be the first, the very first statewide indigenous peoples day. And you can visit the Indian Affairs State Agency for some more information about that. And I also want to thank the UNL, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Native American Coalition, for sharing their land acknowledgement on their website, which I have used and slightly amended here today. So, next, Krista, thank you, you know, for having me back on Encompass Live to talk about UNL's Queer Omaha Archives. I'm glad we could do this in October, which for those of you who may not know, October is just a whammy month for me. It's LGBTQ History Month, yay. It's also American Archives Month, so there's a double yay. And lots of other months. There's Family History Month in October, the first half of October is Hispanic Heritage Month, but I'm here to say it's because of those first two months. So, as Krista said, my name is Amy Schindler. I use she, her pronouns, hopefully, as you saw, I want to just sort of give you context about who I am. I'm a cisgender straight white woman. I'm an archivist. I'm a first generation college student. And I acknowledge that I'm a colonizer here in Omaha. I moved to the Great Plains only in 2014. So today I'm going to talk about the beginnings of the archives five years ago. And then I want to tell you about some of the material in the collection. That could be a whole, you know, couple of hours. So thank you for indulging me and sharing some of that. But it's okay if it takes longer. Yeah, yeah, that'll just be like, you know, you can have me back again in the future. Krista, I could talk. I could talk. But so I'll talk about some of those things, you know, and just kind of overall tell you about this growing initiative. I'll talk about some of the programming and outreach we've been doing a little bit about what we want to do. And then, you know, throughout there'll be some lessons learned and some ongoing things that we're doing, maybe some things we hope to do in the future. So, the key ways to the queer Omaha archives. It's beginnings as Kristen mentioned, you know, where we're five years ago actually in the fall of 2015, my UNO colleague, Dr. Jesse Hitchens, who is the director of our gender and sexuality resource center. She led bringing to campus a speaker from another university who came October of the history month and was talking about, you know, LGBTQ history, but also, you know, he had some work in archives and so he was talking about archives. And that was really a great sea that was planted. And we brought together some people from across campus, some faculty and some students, some staff. And they were hearing what he was talking about. And, and so then the conversation was like, Hey, do you want to do that here. And I was like, let's do that here. Yes. So, we actually, Jesse, with my, you know, full-throated support, then organize sort of a formal meeting at the end of that year to bring together not only some of those campus folks who had expressed interest during LGBTQ history month, but then also inviting in representatives from some community organizations, and then specific representatives from student organizations as well to talk about, hey, let's, can we start this LGBTQ2 collection here at the University of Nebraska Omaha Libraries. Folks were very enthusiastic. During that meeting though, you know, we talked about a whole range of issues. I did a little bit of archives 101 education like explaining what what is an archives. What would be here? What will we do with this material? What could happen? Folks brainstormed potential, you know, individuals and organizations that we should talk to about potentially donating, you know, personal papers, organizational records. People were very enthusiastic about collecting oral history interviews. So we talked about potential for that. Great conversation. We also talked about the scope of the project and, you know, it's QO for Omaha archives. And that was very intentional on my part. I said, you know, I hadn't, I'll be honest, I hadn't done enough of my homework at that point. I hadn't reached out and talked to, you know, some of the other cultural heritage organizations in the state yet. So I actually wasn't aware of what was happening outside of Omaha or might be happening outside of Omaha as far as collecting. But I had, because I was new to Omaha, I'd already talked to a lot of my colleagues at other heritage institutions here in around the city. And so I felt confident saying no one else in the city of Omaha and its environs is it has a concentrated LGBTQ plus collecting initiative. So this is something we could, you know, I could safely say we can do for Omaha. And, you know, for those who don't know, Council Bluffs, Iowa is right across the Missouri River from Omaha. So we're part of the same metro area. So I do kind of include Council Bluffs in there a bit officially as well as unofficially sometimes. So we talked about that. And I said, let's focus on Omaha to start. Okay. And then I said, you know, I think very quickly and organically, we will in fact become the de facto. We could become a de facto collection for LGBTQ plus material from across Nebraska and Western Iowa. And that did come to pass. But the name queer Omaha archives was selected at that meeting. And I talked about that in a bit of detail here because, you know, that was one lesson learned. So that was an early step on my part. You know, the word queer, we use it in academia. You know, we're talking about the discipline when students and faculty and staff are talking about identities, queer is a word that, you know, it's, it's, it's just it's everywhere here. It's everywhere, but it's very easily used. But, you know, what I should have said more strongly in that meeting was, hey, this word. There may, there will be folks in the community, especially the baby boomer generation, who will have a negative reaction to that word. And that certainly did come to pass. Now, as far as I know, the name of the collections collecting initiative has not resulted in any folks specifically saying, hey, we're not going to donate material or engage with you. But it has certainly meant that we've in some cases sort of had to pause, maybe moving forward, and had to do some ongoing conversations about language of all the uses intentionality, and that so. Now, the purpose of the QA, like most archival initiatives is to collect, preserve and share LGBTQIA to spirit plus history. And again, we are looking at Omaha, but also the entire state of Nebraska and Western Iowa, and intentionally through archival material. So just so we're clear what we mean by archival material, you know, photos, scrapbooks, flyers, posters, audio recordings, video recordings, correspondence, meeting minutes, newsletters, and for us also local newsletters and newspapers, too. There we go. So when we started, we very intentionally said, no, thank you, we are not accepting books at this time. And we were only accepting periodicals, so newspapers or magazines, if they were from Omaha, or maybe Lincoln a little bit too. So no surprise any of us library workers, people really wanted to give us their books and their magazines, their personal libraries that they've been holding on to like that was from like day one of this this going public. So, for example, in July 2016 we held an opening reception. We're welcomed in campus and the Omaha community members to come in and see some of what we'd already collected to hear about what we were planning to do. You know, and just kind of, you know, meet great and that sort of thing. And so you know there were lots of people who were very happy to chat about possibly donating their archival material that they've been holding on to. You know, for any number of years, but there were also really people were like, hey, how about my books, I've got, you know, dozens hundreds thousands of books I'd like to give you can I and then even some people brought in boxes of local magazines and newspapers, you know, at that event, which is lovely to see but then it's also like, hey, we need to have a conversation here and I need to explain to you. Thank you so much for thinking of us. We are not accepting books, specifically at this time and said, you know, in the future we can talk about those books that might be in your storage unit or your, you know, your garage and that sort of thing. But right now it's just very important when we were getting started to be able to focus on not what am I going to do with 3000 books that I've got to find some place to store and eventually sort through but let's focus on the archival material those primary sources. So we assured folks that we would consider books in the future. And I said, we will get back to you about that. And, and we did. So, just, you know, no surprise there to anybody. So this slide is just about where we at in the archives today like sort of number wise. So we've had over 40 individuals and organizations, donate either archival material and or books and periodicals to us. As far as archival material goes that comes out to over 80 cubic feet and over three gigabytes of material. The book collection has grown to over 3000 titles. As far as books go we are accepting anything it's mostly us printed material but anything in English really fiction nonfiction does not have to have a connection to Omaha, Nebraska, Western Iowa. With the newspapers and magazines, it's, you know, almost exclusively though, those do have to have that local connection. So, and that's that's fairly hyper local like Nebraska, or like Council Bluffs Western Iowa. We won't accept anything from like even, you know, Kansas City which is three hours away it's like nope they have a wonderful LGBT archives down there. Let's connect you to them. So how do we get books so fast. Well, one way was the GLBT. I'm sorry the rainbow rainbow outreach GLB T center of Omaha, which closed several years ago, before the archive was started here. They were the first large donor of to give us their library of, I think it being over about 2000 titles we added from their collection, and then my name Dr Jim metter was retiring. He was down sizing, moving out of Omaha. And so he had about he was a voracious reader. So he had about 1000 books of late 20th early 21st century. LGBTQ fiction that he donated to us that was a wonderful. Those are two wonderful collections really kick off the book collection and then we've continued to receive, you know, fairly steady stream of those book donations from folks. You know, a couple dozen books here and there, maybe, you know, 100 or so at a time. And then also in the past when we had library funds available for book purchasing. I would consciously buy some titles. LGBTQ specific titles either, you know, more historical things, but then also recently published material. So that included books by and or about Omaha people. But then also zines published by local Omaha folks here, whether they themselves were LGBTQ or the topic related to gender and sexuality. So, one of my longer term development and fundraising goals for the qa is that we would have a fund. An endowment specially established for, you know, ongoing acquisitions that would allow us to not only keep purchasing new material and older, you know, historical material. But then also, you know, when we have a donor who's out of town has to ship something to us. So we can reimburse that person because some of that can be a real barrier for some some people who want to want to give to us. Not a top priority, but it's on my list of things we want to support. So I'm going to roll here into highlighting some of the things from the collection that we have. So this first couple slides here are about some of these local, you know, I'll call newspapers magazines in some cases they're like newsletter format or tabloid format. So, they're on the left gay freedom. This is the oldest LGBTQ newsletter that we know about that was published here in Omaha and that was in August 1972. We only have the one issue unfortunately it's just front and back of a single page. This is digitized on our website. You know, we don't know a lot about this organization. It, the membership was anonymous, which is not terribly surprising. But we are fortunate we do know a bit about them in part because, you know, this is post on wall. Right so LGBTQ rights movement it's happening including here in Omaha and across Midwest. Most of the members were actually interviewed by the Omaha World's Herald, which is our local major daily newspaper here in Omaha. So we have a bit more information about this group down the road in Lincoln. There were student groups active at the university there as well as community and alumni groups that were fairly closely interwoven so we had things like the Lincoln gay news on gag and other publications from Lincoln that were being published throughout the 1970s. We didn't get another, you know, kind of Omaha specific publication until late 1970s when gain gay awareness I when Nebraska came out. And that was a multi page newsletter published for about three years, at least we have three years of issues. And, you know, that publication was talking about a whole host of things and topics that sadly are not unfamiliar to us today. So they would be talking about, you know, hey, you know, we're getting harassed in public. You know, whether it's someplace like the kind of the neighborhood that the block where folks would be cruising, or whether it was coming out of bars or being in bars, you know, being harassed in public let alone private homes. So they were, you know, or the police if someone was, you know, attacked and beat up the police weren't doing anything to try and you know find the folks who were assaulting members of the community. And then also very publicly talking about and then talking to politicians who, you know, were putting out like homophobic ads as part of their campaign politics. So really, doing a lot of great work there. And then we have the new voice of Nebraska, and this was published from 1984 to 1998. It's first about two years, you know, about two years was published in Lincoln. And then you know the initial publisher, you know, just kind of a lot of work putting out this regular monthly publication. And so he was going to close it down but some folks here in Omaha were like hold on this can't go away this is too valuable. It's a wonderful, wonderful magazine that's coming out. So they moved the publication to Omaha and volunteers took it over and kept it going then for more than a decade. So all of all of those years of the new voice are available on our website. And we're very fortunate that we've got multiple paper sets of this that were donated by supporters of the archives, and then a community member before years ago. They with their scanner at home, they had digitized the whole run of the new voice at home on their scanner and we got a copy of that. So that was a late Dino Andrade, and that's that's lovely it saved us a lot of labor. Unfortunately though you know it was done at home with their home scanner. So the quality isn't what you know we the archivist would have done would have had our folks doing. But it's, you know, the OCR isn't perfect. It's far from perfect, but it is available. So and that's been a wonderful resource for us these last five years, or so that it's been online. OCR because someone did ask and I was going to bring it up later. You said these are skin and you said they are searchable then as well. Yep. Yeah, all of our digital collections are we use island door now. But I don't have an OCR like rate on this but it's certainly lower than you would. You would, you would have big but you'd be creating in your library or archives. I'll just say that. But yeah, you can you can do that. Yep. Let's see here. Sorry. And then, you know, in the 90s and early 2000s there were another a number of other newspaper tabloid format publications coming out of Omaha and Lincoln and again Western Iowa. We have the River City beat times the heartland that there was another one called the buzz I was primarily more of a lesbian lens. But these are some publications we only have like one to very scattered issues of. So we're really hoping to get more of these, as well as any other publications that may be out there. So, the new voice in Nebraska closed or shut down published last issue in 1998. There's a little bit of a vacuum there. But 1999 what eventually became the gaze that was first published. And you can see on the left there that what's happening. It's first published basically as a calendar of events. That had been part of the new voices in the back of the new voice there is always the calendar what's coming up. So it started as like what's what's going on, you know what events are there at bars churches, you know, theater productions other just you know what's the course doing all those kinds of things. And then it grew out from there to be more of, you know that that magazine size but you know multiple page coming out regularly. For the most part of the publication did vary. So it's final issue towards the end there was only being published online. And it's final issue was published in December 2016. So we had started the archives at that point and we've been very fortunate to meet the folks. So Jay Schumann and George Broadway who were publishing it at the end and they very generously not only gave us you know complete paper run of it, but then also gave us their digital files, and gave us consent to put that online so that's online, along with the new voice in Nebraska so we've got this great representation of, you know, at least some voices of Nebraska's LGBT plus history from 1984 to 2016 freely available open access. The first one I want to talk about here is Terry Sweeney. He donated the Terry Sweeney Pat failing papers. He was our first donor that came to us from outside of the university. So he wasn't alumnus or employee. And luckily for us Terry is a saver. Okay, so he has saved photos he saved cards, flyers posters, eat some home movies, other thing other memorabilia. And he's donated that to the archives, and it documents you know their involvement in their employee resource group, Eagle in the 1980s in their involvement with you know pride parades and pride celebrations in Omaha, but then also going to national events. So, here we go. So, you know, Terry and Pat and other friends, they would go to events like the gay games, which were held you know kind of the Olympic style competition right. They went to a couple of those. They went to the marches on Washington 1987 and 1993, which were known as the basically the second and third marches on Washington for lesbian gay and by rights. So he shared this and you know Terry also he was very generous and gave us his time. So he came in after the donation for a long time and was identifying, you know who's in these photos. So we have in our database is much as Terry remembers who's in these photos when they were taken. What events they were all that good stuff. So, you know, what's on this screen here are you know some of those national events I was talking about on the bottom there. It kind of plays out something that's very specific to the 1980s and early 1990s but people I some students don't know about this younger folks will know about this but that shows Terry and Pat and friends, creating the project memory aids quilts where for their friend or panel for their friend Jonathan Schneider. And they are what they're gluing down there is Jonathan did calligraphy. So that's meant to be like a quill pen underneath his name there. Yeah. So they're doing that and they're they're holding it. And then what what people across the country would be creating these panels, you know specific sizes, then they would mail them off to San Francisco, and then volunteers in San Francisco would then so the panels together into sections of the quilt and that's what you see on the right there is the section the quilt that had Jonathan's panel on it. In 1987 march on Washington for lesbian gay rights that was the first time that all of the sections that have been created as of that time, we're displaying the quilt panels for the, you know, thousands of folks who were victims of AIDS victims of AIDS. So, yeah. And then the collection later we also have home movies and photos of they would have what happens with the quilt is sections of it would then be sort of lent out across the country. And sometimes when sections were coming to Omaha and Lincoln. Yeah. So Dr. Meredith bacon. It's another important collection for us in the early collection for us. She's probably, you know, the if not one of if not the most important person to date in Omaha are you know LGBTQ history. She sent her, you know, she's political scientist spent her entire career here at UNO. She was the first trans professor to serve as the president of Faculty Senate serve a term before she transitioned and after she transitioned. So for this and other reasons, when she transitioned in 2005. You know her story was across the news both here you know hyper locally in the gateway which are students paper, but also Omaha newspapers and news outlets, as well as nationally like she and her wife Lynn bacon appeared in people magazine. Okay. They were on Good Morning America. This was a this was a very big deal the story of their transition and their life together so Dr bacon. You know retired had retired in 2016 and she very generously donated to us photos, some of her research material, but also you can see one example there. She had saved all of the emails, letters and cards that she and her wife Lynn had received and copies of some of the like the emails and things and letters they had sent out to people announcing this. So that's a that's a very important collection for us. Advance. There we go. Okay, so I'm just to mention then so we have papers from those individual folks couples and individuals. And we also have some organizational records that are here so the Metropolitan Community Church of Omaha donated their collection to us in 2017 sorry I had to think there for a second. So the MCC church was founded in California in the 1960s. And then as it grew, they would establish churches across the country. So in the early 70s they came to Omaha they were established here in Omaha and 74. So in the early church bulletins in the 70s and 80s basically functioned as, you know, and as we TQ plus community newsletter, it had events but it also had columns and articles, sharing news and personal experiences. So we're very excited that they donated their their material to us it's very rich in photos, as well as some some church documents. So the church grew was growing here in Omaha, you know, in the 80s. At one point there was a second MCC church of Omaha, a little further out west, and for a while there was also an MCC and Lincoln later contracted so we're just back to the, the one MCC church here now. And we're very fortunate right now that we have a library science graduate student named Kaz who is doing an internship with us, and they very easily want to work on QA collection so they are actually processing these records for us which is wonderful. So that means they'll be arranged and described and more easily used by researchers. In the section you see here's some things documenting Omaha's first lesbian alternative band lavender couch. This came to the archives in 2018. Not directly from one of the band members but sort of with a secondary career, a local teacher who at the time worked for Omaha Public Schools and Emily brush, who worked on a summer program there. She knew them and it's a very long story but it's a wonderful story. So, but it's a great collection because it's got flyers, lots of photos. And then also really cool thing it's got their, their debut self titled album, which is a, you know, very lovely, you know early 1990s cassette tape. They were published on cassette rather than going with a CD because CDs were like, they were out of that point they were still new I mean I didn't have a CD player yet. But they were they were happening. But they published on cassette tape because that was less expensive. So, and we're very fortunate. They, the original four members sat down with us this past June during pride month. And they were kind of, you know, them sharing some of their memories of the band and Omaha music and their own experiences. And hopefully, you know, in, in, in the next times, when folks are coming together, we can do a reunion, and we've, we talked about maybe getting them back back together and doing a couple songs from their album. Actually doing a concert or something that would be awesome. And we'll do a show that no one said no to it with the understanding that because the 30th anniversary of the album coming out is, is in like two years. So they've got time to work up to it. So that's, that's, that was super fun event and that was, you know, very conscious something we've been talking about doing for several months. That was the, I was actually the only, that was the first and only virtual event the archives did during the pandemic, really until like, very recently. So that's, it was, it was a lot of fun for us. Let's talk about our oral history initiative LGBT plus voices. So this was something, again, mentioned in like the very first organizing meetings that folks, the non archivists were excited about, you know, doing something like an oral history project. I'll introduce the woman in the little right corner there that's Dr. Carolyn fiskus also known as big mama. She's retired. She's a UNO she, she's Ho-Chunk. She was director of Native American Studies here for many years and then just taught for a long time after her set my retirement. So she was one of the first people interviewed for the project and the interviews actually started in fall of 2016. Thanks to my wonderful colleague Dr. Jay Irwin. I'm a sociologist here at UNO. And he was excited about the archives, you know, from from before day one. He was actually teaching the intro to LGBT studies course from the sociology department that fall. And he was like, Hey, I want to include the archives. I want you to come over and share some things and talk about what's in the archives but then also I'm he was willing. He was, you know, I talked about, yeah, I've worked with classes at other institutions where students have gathered for interviews and they've gone to the archives. So he was willing to give that a try. And I'll cut it to Jay. He spent a lot of time that summer and early fall, developing a potential list of interviewees from the community. And then trying to track people down and get them to agree to be interviewed, which it's a lot of a lot of like work so I need to get these to get these projects off the ground. So all thanks to Jay there on that. The project, you know, mixed results that first semester, I think, but there were 15 or 16 interviews that were done by students and pairs. Eventually 12 of the people who were interviewed agreed that their interviews could come to the archives and be shared with people. You can ask what happened to those other three or four people later if you want to know more. But it was a good project. Jay and I felt good about it, but it was also like this is not sustainable to do this because it was a lot of work for him and it was, you know, a fair bit of work for me as well. So what we had talked about doing what we wanted to do was do some private fundraising. You know, and that was something we talked about from that first reception we had, you know, while telling the community about the archives in in 2016 was hey, we've also established a fund at the University of Nebraska Foundation to support the QA. Here's how you can give to it. So we've done a small amount of fundraising that way and then we applied to our humanity, Nebraska, which gave us a mini grant, which we then matched with some private money that we'd received and then the you know libraries that we wanted to have a small fund it's the Eugene, Eugene S. and Sonia Thomas fund for innovation so if I get a grant I can apply for like matching matching funds from that. So that helped us to sort of double that money. We were we got from humanity, Nebraska and the rest of cultural endowment. And we applied for a grant from that organization in 2017. We're able to hire Luke Wagner. He was wonderful, got him trained, and he started interviewing folks in 2017. And then in 2018 we applied for a second grant for me to Nebraska and got that. And, you know, again a little bit of private money, and sort of kept coming together money to keep Luke on staff, very part time, you know, kind of very, very part time working for us, but it, I don't know that it worked, but it. I would say mixed results. The good news is we've, you know, 50 interviews have been collected. You know, over the last four or five years, well, five years, I guess, and most of them are available to folks on our website. But, you know, this is one of my big fundraising goals is to be able to hire someone full time, either an archivist or staff member. You know, if it's if it's only project money for a couple of years, that's okay, but to have someone full time to be able to collect even more interviews. So that's that's sort of my a bigger, a bigger fundraising goal I have for for that. So, yeah, we also did some online giving campaigns like those 24 hour giving campaigns. We weren't allowed to do like the local community one, but there was one called give out day, which is for LGBTQ plus organizations around the country. So we did that for two years in 2018 and 2019. Very pleasantly surprised the first year raised over $1000 and had lots of donors which exceed my expectations. The second year only raised a few hundred dollars didn't have as many donors. So decided to not continue that. And that was for a bunch of reasons as well. And I was like, I, you know, did that alright. But then in 2020, the University of Nebraska Omaha launched its first 24 hour day of giving called where black give back. And so we did that last year for the QA in 2020 and October 2020. And the library was, I should say the QA was the raised the most money of the different initiatives from the library. So, not a huge amount of money, but we did we did had respectable, respectable numbers for the first year, and we will be participating that again. So, if you'd like to support the QA, Google where black give back queer Omaha archives, and you can give to us that that was actually the live part of it is next week on the 13th and 14th, but you can give any time, or you can go to our University of Nebraska page and give any time. Sorry, got to plug that. Yeah. So, let me talk a little bit about outreach. Keep an eye on time, Krista. So, we've done a variety of actually since you're talking about searching for that. In case I was wondering, we will have any slides available afterwards with all this information on it and links to a lot of things she's been talking about too. I got your email, the links to the archive page and the where black give back page and everything else. So, you'll have access to all this later. Great. If you have any questions, go ahead and get typed into your question section so we can get them asked before we do wrap up today so type in there any questions, comments, anything you want to say. Yeah, so let me talk about outreach. We've done some typical things like typical for us here in archives and special collections typical for an academic library and then we certainly done some things that were new to to us and academic library may not all be new to you but we're very new to you. So, one thing that was new to me was collaborating with an art center. So the behemoth center of contemporary art is located here in Omaha. They brought in a Canadian American Trans Arts in the castles who did was doing some installation pieces, and then was doing a second installation slash happening. In the late spring of their, their kind of four months time the exhibit was up but they invited the QA to help do some kind of local history research so was doing that and then they also said hey you've got some really neat stuff. So I lent them some posters and some visual items they could put up in a gallery adjacent to castles work. And then what's in the photo here is one thing that the curator was really keen on and I grew keen to it as well was. Hey, can we have some archival boxes on display. So we put out these gray boxes, most of them are empty but they we put a sticker on them on the outside and then we put photocopies and one box that was open and label the folders as you would if it were you know real documents. But this is meant to represent the papers of Dr Meredith Bacon. So that was the actual size of her collection at that time. So that's what it looked like and so that's what the labels on the outside are. You know this was a lesson learned you know I said yes to be no lonely these items. And then they said hey you do gallery talk and I was like, what does that mean. So I never done that kind of formal gallery talk before. So that was a great great experience. And then they asked me to participate in this other installation piece and I, I was sort of skeptical and was I was I was uncertain I was uncertain about what that would be like. And, but I said yes, and it was a mostly positive experience. One part I wish I had said no to was on the day of the event when I got there they're like okay Amy time for you to come back and be filmed and I'm like be filmed for what. So they, there was a film that went along with installation. And so I appear in that film, and I was not prepared for that show. I was like, if that was ever mentioned I missed that and did not find that in the earlier emails I'll just say that but so you know I, if I'd been maybe more confident I maybe would have said no to that in the moment but did not feel confident so people it's okay to say no. Let's just remind ourselves. So we've done some more traditional things so this is one of the gallery here in you know libraries Chris library. And this is Terry Sweeney the donor I talked about before our first non university donor. And here he is being interviewed by a student for the you know TV show who then also wrote like an article about him for students paper and about this show. And so Terry is a great friend of the archives, you know, as well as a donor. And then of course we also do other displays in the library in like flat display cases we have throughout the building. Those tend to be you know they might be book displays, but also like just smaller displays like right now during LGBTQ History Month, our intern cast and my clear my colleague Claire Delaney did to flat cases right outside the archives here on the first floor and one is about. Terry's paper Terry Pat's papers about the Omaha leather community, and a second one about the UNO the current UNO student LGBTQ plus student organization queer and trans services so those are always happening. That you know on Twitter or Facebook I saw someone share about that was that you or somebody else that shared so excited that displays here. It might have been our intern. Yeah, our interest involved that I'm not sure might might have been me as well. But we've you know we have our current intern but we also had past interns and so we always you know talk with them about what kind of projects do you want to do. So we had one past intern who was like very excited about creating some zines for us. So here they are at work. So here we are doing our QA zine and what they did was they listened to lots of the interviews that we had at that time, and they picked out quotes, and these interviews were not transcribed so they had to listen and pick out quotes it was great. And they would put a quote on a page and then include like a photo or a flyer or poster or something from the collection on the page that zine as well so you kind of see the back I have the end of the backside there because it has their credit line on it. And sometimes our library has a button maker. So we make buttons and hand those out. You know, it's, it works okay. Yeah. You know, we are library, you know, in an academic setting so of course we also do instruction sessions. We also include both UNO students classes from a range of disciplines sometimes they're they're coming in specifically just to see the QA material. And sometimes you know, they're coming in, you know, see a range of material and we are very conscious of, you know, presenting QA material alongside other topical things you know when we had the western history class come in. Yeah, here's here's things from QA that are in that collection. They might come in for a university students but also when we've had middle and high school students coming in for either, you know, maybe a quick they might come in for a quick like 20 minute tour, or sometimes they'll come in for like a like an hour or two hour session in the archives. We also very consciously include material from QA in those visits. And, you know, it's great seeing our UNO students get excited about it but when you see like a younger younger student, you know, who, you know, they're seeing that representation and seeing a bit of history and like, you know, that that LGBTQ plus identities they may have are represented there that is a beautiful moment to see. And it's a wonderful experience every time. So, these photos here are from some past receptions we've hosted both for internal, you know, UNO events or for external events like conferences or meetings that were happening on campus. We have a very sweet table at various community events. You know, we're at Heartland Pride Festival every year. We don't say we do that every year. We've gone to like the Riverside Mix course had a big anniversary conference or concert we, you know, took multiple tables of things from their history out to that. But you know, I've one another lesson learned is it's okay to say no. You know, we, we can't go to everything. You know, that is, you know, that we either get invited to and or hear about. So we try to go to various things, but, you know, even if, you know, we had a an archivist who is dedicated to the QA full time which we do not. You know, I don't know they would have time to go to every tabling event out there. You know, that's that was one thing definitely after the early date, you know, early days felt like it couldn't say no needed to go. But then after a couple years, you know, when someone sort of last minute would say hey, we're doing this thing like literally, we're doing a thing like next Sunday a week away. And it's before our like fun run. We'd love you to come out on table at like 9am on Sunday and I'm like, Yeah, no we can't make it. We can't make it for a whole host of reasons. Thank you for the invitation. If you'd ever like to come, come visit the archives, please do. So, you know, can you get worried when you're first starting something like I don't want to offend anyone. But you know, like that organization was new. Yeah. Yeah, and there's there's still plenty of people in organizations who don't know unfortunately don't know who we are what we're doing yet. And people, you know, they don't take offense when you're just like, Thank you but I can't we can't make it we can't do that event but can we do something else. And so, you know, I'm regularly saying like, Hey, yeah, sorry, we can't table at your event in the park that really doesn't work out for us schedule wise or their tribal material or whatever the reasons might be. But would you ever like to. In a monthly board meeting, would you like to come meet here in our library. We can do like a pop up display and give you a give me 10 minutes give me a half hour how much time you want to give me to talk about it. Because what I want them to know we have it. And then I'm also of course prospecting for future donations of material and money to but donations, you know, usually first in this case. I've extended lots of offers like that. You know, not afraid takes you up on that offer right away, but you keep making the offer low pressure sales tactics it's very low pressure. Usually low pressure yeah, there's there's one gentleman who I've seen him at we've been at pride, you know for five years, we didn't there was no pride here in a mall last year of course. Every year at pride I think he's introduced himself to me and told me what organization he, you know, volunteers with I'm like, oh that's great we'd love to have those records. And he's talked to told me about the records a little bit and where they're stored and so I know about them now every year he does this, but he won't give me his like he wouldn't give me his email or phone number. And every year I give him our brochure I give him my business card I said I'd love to give you a tour. And he always said no and like this year when I saw him at pride again like, you know, within like a couple seconds I was like, it's you, it's you sir. And I, I called he was with a friend who hadn't met me before and I was joking about it and I was like oh yeah we're old friends but he won't tell me, you know how to get a touch with them. He was, you know, joking joking a little maybe a little, a little hard intense. But he, he almost a caved but I went to his house Christa. He, he this year he donated some of his books from his book collection to us. So I still don't have his art that I cry well records he has access to but we got the books so that's exciting. Finally, it takes you just got to keep. Yeah. So, so I should say that social media to I look at our social media that way to we very intentionally do not have separate social media accounts for the QA or for our archives and special collections in general. I've had to run those before and I was like, let's just stick with the libraries. And so we make use of those accounts, but we also very consciously like yes we post a lot of QA content in October and June. But you know what, I celebrate, you know, American archives month throughout the year I also celebrate LGBTQ history month. LGBTQ history like every day. So, you know, hey, when we can cross post you know it hey February's black history month let's put some QA content out there. March is women's history month. Let's put some QA content out there, you know very consciously like, this is women's history but this is also LGBTQ history. So we're doing that kind of thing on social media, but not like intensely intensely. So I'll just this slide here is a slide I've started using when I'm going out and giving a talk to like corporations employee resource group or community organization. It's kind of it's like the call the action. Right. At the end of the talks people are like this is great what do I do. So this is what you know that I talk with folks about you know the donation process what kind of things we're looking for. As far as material for the archives, and then I just say like hey, if you can if you want to visit come in for a tour will do a pop up display do some research of your own wonderful online or in person. You know, share, you know, send a link to somebody post a link on social media. If you knew that brochure feel free to pass it on to somebody else later given my contact information, whatever it might be. Because, you know, I am under no illusions, not every one of the community knows about the archives right. And that's both our UNO communities and our greater Omaha let alone Nebraska and Western Iowa so I appreciate all the support we can get from people. You know, and then financial contributions I've sort of talked about that throughout. You know, big dream there would be to basically endow the entire collection and name it have it named for someone so it could be the Krista Burns collection, just laying the groundwork here Krista for you and you. Yeah, or the any show there whatever they want to do, you know, you can name it honor someone to. You know, asking folks they want to volunteer to be interviewed for oral history that's great. You know, we are going to be, we have Luke back on the QA oral histories right now for just a few weeks to kind of tie up some loose ends. And then that'll, that will be unless we raise a whole bunch of money. We pause that for a while will be kind of think about, you know, what's what's next for that part of the archives the archives is going to continue but the oral history portion is what we're sort of pausing a bit. So, yeah, our website, you know, we originally started on a mecca net website because we could have digital collections and static pages together this year we have migrated to island door for digital collections. And we've moved the QA web pages back to or to they were never on the main library site in the university's content management system so that's that's been good. You know, it was time for that right maybe a little past time. And I just want to end on a note of gratitude here if I could an appreciation to both the donors users or researchers folks interested in the collect people just like passing by. And who've shown an interest. And then, you know, my colleagues here in our archives and our university libraries, but also across the state of Nebraska. And those are glam institutions across the state who show again an interest or support in a variety of ways. The archives is, I think it's truly a place filled with individual community stories and voices, certainly much more than I can do justice today but thank you for this time and I invite folks on behalf of the you know libraries archives and special collections to visit us online, come to the library we are back open to the public again without appointments. You know or contact me and I'd be happy to come out and we could do a pop up display at a location, or do a talk on a specific topic. You know, so reach out. You know, funding and traveling exhibit that might be something that's that's an idea for our future. So that was our first grant proposal and that was unsuccessful a few years ago but maybe it's time to try again. So, yeah, yeah, thank you. Definitely. Yeah. All right. Is that your last slide then that was yeah. Thank you so much, Amy. Anybody have any questions for Amy as we're wrapping up here get typed in the question section nobody had any questions during the decline. So thank you so much for sharing your site and looking at everything. This is great. I was so like I said so glad to have you guys back. You know, five years later to talk about how things are going and very happy that it's so impressive so many things that you've got so now, and how much it's expanded. Are you any at all concerned about space. You talked about a lot of donations and do you have room for expansion or how's that going. Yeah, I think I think space is an issue for lots of cultural heritage organizations when we're talking about archival material certainly here in Omaha. Lots of us will talk about our needs, both archives and museums for storage. We are okay here you know libraries. I would say maybe two years ago I would have said, you know, we're we're trying we need to get more space. So we are actually repurposing some compact shelving that in other part of the library and we're getting a lot it's getting locked down. So we can move out to that. So it'll be in the general library area but locked down. So we're going to move like the the not some not rare things out there. So that will free up some storage space in our climate, you know controlled and monitored and secure collection storage space here in the archives and special collections for archival materials and, you know, most of the book collection and things like that. We're doing okay, that's only a midterm solution. So, you know, if you ask that question again in like six years. Unless some, some big thing happens again if there's a donor out there who would like to sponsor some offsite storage for Omaha's local cultural heritage organizations. There's a whole bunch of us who would appreciate that. Yeah. Here. Anika up in North Fork North Fork Nebraska just had its first ever pride event in September. Awesome. I think I know the answers question with the archive be interested in material from that event. Absolutely and you get thank you for for reaching out about that yeah. We'd we'd love to have you know if you want to send me links to social media postings or if you have flyers other things photos, or know who does. Who does have some content. Please, I yeah let's talk about that. That'd be great. Yeah, we've, we've had conversations with different cultural heritage institutions across the state about local content. You know in some cases, there was a donor in Wayne, who did normal history interview with us and had some material and said, you know, they offered it to us and I said, we'd love to have it, but let me just double check that there is an institution in Wayne that this should go to kind of thing. Yeah. So that's a very common thing for us conversation for us to have right. So if a donor comes to us and they're like a UNO student or UNO or I'm sorry UNL University of Nebraska Lincoln, student or employee. I'll say this is wonderful it definitely needs to be preserved. Let's talk with our colleagues down at the University of Nebraska Lincoln because that that they may want it, you know, if the donors. Yeah. Yeah, if the if the if the donors open to that of course some donors, you know, they've got to they've got to be for whatever reason they may have. Yeah. Yeah, they want it. I'm sure. Yeah. And I think you might have mentioned earlier, but we'll explain again to us, do you accept. So do you accept material from outside Nebraska. You know, so books. Yes, periodicals. No, unless it's Western Iowa. Okay. If it is some of we're talking about someone's personal papers or organizational records. I'd want to know more about that person, or that organization. So again it might be that conversation of, you know, it's great that you want to donate this to us, but if they're in Minneapolis, Chicago, Kansas City, which for those who are not in the Midwest are, you know, cities have nearsh by to different a different extent. You know, have you talked to a repository in your your home city or where you are now, or what is their reason for contacting us and figuring out what that may be. There's some sort of connection to UNO maybe from this person or from these documents for some reason. Yeah. Yeah. So, you're, you do have things from outside of the area, but you know, you are called the queer Omaha archives. It is supposed to be, you know, here's something for the Midwest, that particular area, and there may be something similar somewhere else. So yeah, see if that might be better to reside. Let me just clear, we are the queer Omaha archives, but we do collect Omaha, Western Nebraska, but also the entire state of Nebraska. So, you know, we have, we have a donor who, you know, went to Wayne State, and they're they're from that part of the state which is, you know, an hour or two from Omaha. They don't have a connection to Omaha or UNO, but they've donated content to us. And they no longer, you know, they live on the West Coast now. So, we appreciate that support. Yeah, but doesn't have to be that straight up Omaha connection. So, we're willing to consider it. But I have no problem directing people to other institutions. The answer would be reach out and I ask. Yeah. So this is who I am. This is what I've got. Help me figure out where it should be. Absolutely. Yeah. Don't see any other questions here. Desperate last minute questions you want to ask of Amy, go ahead and get it typed in. But I'll work on here now. I'm going to pull present your control back to my screen to work on wrapping things up for this morning. Thank you Amy. There we go. So, this is the page for the show. And I did, we have a link here. All right in the show description that goes to the archives page. There. And there's other links that Amy had sent me. I think I'll add to when I put up the recording, the oral history page. You know, here's the information about the. You have the LGBTQ voices project. I'm going to digital collections where black give back. Oh, here's a question that I may not have the answer to Amy. How many queer libraries are there in the US or collection like this, do you know. Oh, hundreds, you know, because there are certainly some institutions where repositories rather where it is solely dedicated to, you know, LGBTQ history in general or some specific facet of the community. So like in Nebraska, or I'm sorry, in Chicago, there's a leather archive and museum, right. But then there's, you know, many, many more hundreds if not more probably thousands of repositories like you know libraries archives and special collections where, you know, we collect a variety of a variety of different areas and on the QA. Here is very important one, but it's just part of the multifaceted collecting that we do. There is a directory or there was I haven't I didn't check today and make sure it's still out there that was started by the site of American archivists. LGBTQ plus section called lavender legacies at least that's what it used to be called. I volunteered for it a lifetime ago. They and they had a directory of repositories. Mostly US but some Canadian as well. So that might be a place if you if you're wondering if there's one near you. That might be a place to check, or I would just encourage you know hey reach out to your local university or larger public library and ask them if they know and they may be able to tell you pretty quickly. Or you can email me and I can check into it too. And you can just share something to see if I can get this to go up here. And so, so, so, so yours, the crew or you are the only one that you know that specific to this in Nebraska. Yes, I've, I've heard from I will say full disclosure I've heard from other glam organizations they're interested in doing a similar sort of collecting initiative. But not off the ground as far as I'm aware. But you know if you're if you're in Lincoln, go talk to the folks at UNL archives and Central Collections they have lots of LGBTQ collections. Or the public library and Lincoln may have some as well. I'm not like at UNK has has some material so it's it is out there just may not be like they've named it a thing. Like we have right that's what I say many places may have these types of materials but they don't have it as a whole. Yeah, here's the thing that we've named it and we've announced it and made it its own separate. Yeah, just like, you know, we had LGBTQ collections before 2016 it just they weren't, they weren't named. They weren't named entity or their own special collection. Yeah. Yeah, so seriously, I think it did send. Under legacies lesbian and gay archives round table. This is from the Society of American Archivist. Yeah. Guide to sources North America so this is what you're talking about them. Yep. Yep. And you can see here's all the different states that have something. They have updated hours. Oh, this could be embarrassing. Oh good we're there. Okay. Holdings access and uses a lot of reference a lot of information right here on their side about it to that's not a date though so don't, you know, go to our website don't know. To be updated. Hey, look, I found this is the post that I was talking about is this is your intern correct. It is that's cats yeah hey cats you're on TV. Hey, they posted about it, my displays are up. We're proud of their work yep. So that was very cool. All right, so I think we will wrap it up for today. Thank you everyone for being here. Thank you so much and this is great. I'm glad to have this information out there. I will be we will be posting the recording at our website and here is our main and compass live page and you see right under here are coming shows and right underneath yours into our archives. Maybe the top of the list. Most recent ones rise the top here. End of the day tomorrow as long as go to webinar and you to cooperate with me I should have it up here. Everyone who registered today show and signed up will get an email directly from me. Let you know what's ready. We also pushed out on to our very social media. We'll have a link to recording the link to the slides and other links here that I've got saved opened up as well. Also, let you know there is a search feature here if you do want to search our show archives, you can search the entire archive or just most recent 12 months to have something just recent just current. That is because this is the full show archive. I'm not going to go all the way to the bottom but going back to the very beginning of and compass live we premiered in January 2009. And we do have all of our shows here on this long long page. So do pay attention when you are watching anywhere recording show recording shows. They all have an original broadcast date. So do pay attention to that. Some of the information we post. Maybe will stand the test or time will still be accurate for information, but some things will get old links may be broken resources may no longer exist or has changed drastically. So just pay attention when you are watching something. For example, I talked about this. Here is the original show from the query back in 2016. So, you can watch that recording if you want to, but you can see where where Amy started. But definitely watch the show for the current data about it. We do have a Facebook page, which I have over here. There we go. If you do like to use Facebook, give us a like when Facebook is working. Is your mind about logging into the show we do some information about meet our presenter, but always use the hashtag and come live on other social media we do Twitter and Instagram as well to the library commission. So you can keep on what we're doing over there as well. So that will wrap it up for today's show. Thank you for being here. Thank you, Amy. So good to see you again. We will, as you can see here, we will not be having a show next week. It's my one week off throughout the year during the year. So whenever is our state library association annual conference, we take that week off everybody's involved with conference that week so we get a week off from the show. So next week is our Nebraska library association conference and one is doing a combination virtual day on Wednesday and in person on Thursday. So if you're a Nebraska librarian working in Nebraska library may be attending that. But we'll be back week after that, talking with the Nebraska Department of Labor Division of Reimployment Services about helping people who are looking for employment. The Department of Labor wants to work with our libraries in the state so definitely sign up for that. And any of our other upcoming shows, I'll be filling in more than November dates here. Don't you worry or God, I've got things scheduled and just working on finalizing things. So keep it on our website. So, hopefully, thank you everybody. We'll see you on a future episode of Compass Live. See you in two weeks. Bye bye. And the recording is that cool.