By Ove Overmyer
Reprinted from The Empty Closet, August 2008
In most professions, it really helps to be passionately in love with
your work. Librarian, archivist and curator Brenda Marston is just one
of those people.
As one of the country’s top curators, Marston has been in charge of
Cornell University’s Human Sexuality Collection (HSC) since 1989. Even
though Cornell is located smack-dab in the middle of New York State,
the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley has been housing their history
and administrative records in Ithaca since 1994. Brenda talks fondly of
the GAGV’s collection, saying that “Rochester’s rich history is
critical to our library. Cornell’s mission is two fold– national and
upstate New York.”
Cornell Library’s Human Sexuality Collection was established with a
broad mandate to record and preserve the cultural and political aspects
of sexuality. The collection has become the main repository for the
records of national gay rights organizations, including PFLAG (Parents,
Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), the National Gay and
Lesbian Task Force, GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against
Defamation), the National Lesbian and Gay Health Association, the
Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian and Gay Issues, and the
Gay Media Task Force.
As curator of the HSC, Marston has, in the words of a former
University of Wisconsin professor, “created space in the public sphere
for a series of historical voices that were heretofore suppressed by a
largely homophobic culture. Without the kind of resources Brenda has
collected and profiled, these voices would not be heard, and thus, to a
larger society, they would not even appear to exist. Brenda has, in
effect, created a large part of the historical record that
contemporaries and historians will have to study to understand the
present.”
In 2004, the Cornell University HSC also became home to the Human
Rights Campaign’s (HRC) historical records. The acquisition is a boon
to researchers and underscores Cornell Library’s reputation as a
primary resource for the study of human rights history in its many
forms.
Founded in 1980, The HRC is the largest national organization
working for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights. The
nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, with more than 460,000 members and
a staff of over 100, works to advance equality based on sexual
orientation and gender expression and identity.
“We are proud to be entrusted with HRC’s historical legacy,” said
Marston. As the most extensive university collection of its kind, she
added, “These records have tremendous research value.”
Also in 2004, the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Alumni Council
of the Wisconsin Alumni Association honored Brenda Marston with its
Distinguished Alumni Award. The GLBT Alumni Council honors University
of Wisconsin-Madison graduates who have shown an exemplary commitment
to the GLBT community and who have demonstrated excellence in their
life’s work as a self-identified GLBT person or ally.
Part of the genius of this collection is that it brings together so
many varied and relevant collections, allowing researchers in Cornell’s
reading room to gain perspective on national trends in sexual politics
and gay culture over the course of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.
Valuable records of Latinos, African-Americans, and other people of
color strengthen the collection, and its depth is further augmented by
international periodicals and by the holdings of Cornell’s Rare Book
Collection.
Research is made easier by the online Sexuality Research Guide, by
special bibliographies, by a database of the popular fiction and
periodicals, and by the research grants funded by the Zwickler
Foundation.
John Noble, retired archivist for the city of Rochester and a past
board member of the GAGV told The Empty Closet, “I have known Brenda
for almost 20 years. No one in the archivist community had a better
reputation for depth of knowledge, content and process. I was very
comfortable delivering our documents to Brenda and to an institution
that already had an established commitment to GLBT preservation.”
Even though Noble confesses it took a lot of persuasion and
convincing of fellow GAGV board members to go with Cornell at the time,
he knew the materials would be in the best of hands. “I really didn’t
trust the University of Rochester or the County Historian back then to
do the right thing. I knew Brenda would.” History is proving Noble was
right on every count.
Remarkably, the HSC has no backlog. All of its collections are
cataloged and available to researchers. Descriptions and box lists for
each collection are available online.
Brenda is always eager to hear from people with new collecting ideas
and is able and willing to talk with activists about their issues and
concerns. The GAGV reacquainted itself with Brenda when the GAGV
Library & Archives project got off the ground again in 2004. Gerry
Szymanski, coordinator for the project said, “Brenda has been
tremendously supportive of our efforts here in Rochester. She is such a
valuable resource.”
The Empty Closet caught up with Brenda recently while she was taking
a breather between semesters and before her annual Mecca to upper
Michigan to visit relatives. Through a series of scattered phone calls
and emails, we pasted together this interview for our readers.
EC: What is the HSC at Cornell?
BM: The HSC owes its existence to the efforts of two men, David
Goodstein, longtime publisher of The Advocate, and Bruce Voeller,
scientist and early leader of the National Gay & Lesbian Task
Force. Sharing an interest in the cultural and political contexts of
sexuality, they sought an academic library that would begin collecting
and making accessible the primary sources needed for this research.
With the support of Goodstein and Voeller, and the institutional
backing of the University, the Cornell University Library established
the Human Sexuality Collection in 1988.
EC: So, what do you collect?
BM: The HSC is interested in how definitions of sexual identity
shift over time and the way in which personal choices and public
discourse about sexuality evolve. An advisory committee shaped a
collecting policy based on researcher needs, other institution’s
collecting policies, the initial strengths of the HSC, and Cornell’s
academic programs. With this in mind, we decided not to collect
actively in areas such as reproductive rights, sex work, sex education,
sexual violence, and religion and sexuality since other institutions
were already covering these fields and/or they were not particular
strengths at Cornell. We have chosen to seek materials documenting two
large topics: lesbian and gay lives and politics at the national level;
and, changes in society’s attitudes toward erotica and pornography.
EC: How important is the GAGV’s archived materials to the general collection?
BM: The Gay Alliance and a lot of other organizations that exist in
the Rochester area have significantly shaped our history. I am thrilled
to have these records here.
EC: Where did most of the collection come from?
BM: The core of the collection came from the Mariposa Education
& Research Foundation. Voeller, as President of Mariposa, had
organized a bi-coastal effort in the early 1970s to save materials
reflecting gay life and the gay rights movement in the US since WW II.
Building on this base, Cornell has added records of the National Gay
& Lesbian Task Force, the Association of Gay & Lesbian
Psychologists, and PFLAG. Many men and women have sent material, such
as diaries from the 1930s or files relating to current political
activism, that illustrates their lives as lesbians and gay men. We have
numerous collections showing the effects of AIDS on both individuals as
well as on the LGBT community as a whole. The Mariposa Collection
documents changes in gay male erotica since the physique magazines of
the 1950s. We have continued to collect samples of straight, gay and
lesbian erotica, and especially papers of those who either produce
erotica or take public stands about it.
EC: How big is the HSC?
BM: With over 600 cubic feet of manuscripts, 100 international and
900 US periodicals, and 5,000 books, the HSC continues to strengthen
and diversify its holdings. We want to add collections documenting the
emergence of transgender and bisexual politics; the range of feminist
views on pornography; political debates over the definitions of
marriage and domestic partnership; lesbians, bisexual women, and their
health issues; lesbians and gay men with children; queer and
questioning youth; as well as elders in the LGBT community. We seek
more material on Native Americans, Asian Americans, and other people of
color who choose sexual identities outside the mainstream. We’ll
continue to document the impact of the AIDS crisis as well as the
diversity of LGBT lives, work, humor, and sexuality.
EC: What is your biggest challenge?
BM: Our ultimate purpose is to encourage research in this field. All
of Mariposa’s collections and subsequent additions are available for
research use. The HSC is part of Cornell University Library’s Division
of Rare and Manuscript Collections, which is open to the public. The
curator gives introductory tours, works with individual researchers,
and helps instructors design projects for their classes to do here.
Reference assistance is available by letter, e-mail or visit. The
reference room is open 9:00-5:00, Mon-Fri, and 1:00-5:00, Sat. Current
lists of manuscript holdings and periodicals, guides to individual
collections, bibliographies, and descriptions of our book collections
are available, some of them on the web.
EC: Are you still an activist at heart?
BM: Probably so. My partner and I were one of the original “Ithaca
50.” For those who do not know, we are fifty same-sex Ithaca couples
who have lost several rounds in state court seeking permission to
marry. The good fight rages on.
EC: Besides your professional aspirations, what and who are the loves of your life?
BM: I know its sounds cliché, but I love to garden. I am also
working very hard with the “Ithaca for Obama” folks. My partner’s name
is Sarah Simpkins. We are proud parents of two children, Grady, 8 and
Matthew who is 2 1/2. Family life and being parents keeps us very
busy—we find ourselves often helping our oldest son with his homework.
We belong to the PTA and everything. Surprisingly, I’ve become real
fond of “phonics” education, too.
For more information about Cornell Library’s Human Sexuality
Collection, go to rmc.library.cornell.edu/HSC or contact Brenda
Marston at 607-255-9557 or by e-mail at