This page was created by Bec Stargel.
Methods
I started by searching the library catalog by subject. I limited the date range and searched for books related to the following words: homosexual, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transsexual. I used the word transsexual in these searches rather than transgender since the word transgender was not used until the late 1960s and not popularized until the 1990s. I also searched subjects “near” those listed above, such as homosexual men or homosexuals in media. From these searches, I created a list of possible books and then went to the physical shelves. I looked at the books that I had identified, as well as those nearby them. I then conducted a second catalog search using an expanded list of words based on the subjects of the new books I had found on the shelves: paraphilia, transvestism, and sex change. This process of finding new search keywords to search was eye-opening in itself, as it gave me a first look at the context in which LGBTQ+ topics were discussed in academia at the time. The search term paraphilia, and how relevant it was to this project, was particularly striking.
After this second keyword search, and another round of looking through the stacks, I had a relatively comprehensive list of 59 books that were published between 1908 to 1975. I included books if they fit one of three criteria. 1. The subject in the library catalog was directly related to LGBTQ+ experiences/identities (not every book with the subject “paraphilia” was included in this final list, only those which fit one of the other criteria) 2. Their titles mentioned LGBTQ+ experiences/identities, and 3. There was a table of contents that explicitly mentioned LGBTQ+ experiences/identities as a chapter or section.
From there, I began trying to determine when each of these books was purchased by the library. For books purchased by or before 1959, I was able to access this exact date from records in the College Archives. For books purchased after this date, however, this information was either non-existent or inaccessible at the time of my research (Spring 2020). For these books, however, I was still able to determine a relative purchase date based on the accession number. This is the number each book is given when it is purchased by the library, and these numbers are in ascending order. So, for example, if a book was published in 1929 but had an accession number higher than a book published in 1963, it was, at the earliest, purchased in 1963.
I also took pictures of the spines, title pages, and table of contents for each of the books on my list, so I could reference them in the future. After all of this, I had a list of 59 books (likely) purchased by the library at or before 1975, and information about each of these books. It was time to look more in-depth into what these books actually showed.