How to care for and preserve your own contribution to our past ...
Do you have a personal collection of LGBT* related material - correspondence, journals, photos, flyers, articles or other papers?
Are you involved in an LGBT organisation and would like to know more about the preservation of your records?
Your personal collection or organisation’s records may be of important historical and archival value. This is a very brief guide to caring for this kind of material and ensuring its preservation for future generations.
Keep your records in a secure, clean, dry, stable environment and away from natural or artificial light. Extremes of temperature and humidity are especially damaging to all materials, and light accelerates the deterioration process.
Ideally, store your records in acid-free folders and boxes to help slow down the processes of deterioration.
Keep paper items unfolded and remove things that may rust like staples or paper-clips.
Keep your records off the floor and check that your roof is sound and that there is no risk of damage from leaky overhead pipes!
Try to keep your records in their original order. This is an important rule of archiving, because original order tells us a lot about the way an individual or organisation worked.
Remember not all archival documents are paper-based. Archives also comprise emails, web pages, databases and other information in digital form. Try to back up your emails and other digital records regularly onto CDs or DVDs - and label them clearly with the creator and dates. Audio, video and film recordings may also have archival value.
Of course, not all documents have archival value. That docket for claiming travel expenses will have little historical importance! Think about whether the document provides valuable information about the activities and/or function of a person or organisation.
You may want to think about donating your collection to an archive such as ours which specialises in holding LGBT related material - or a local record office. These kinds of repository will ensure the long-term preservation of your collection and may also enable access by researchers, if you choose. Please contact us, or
find the location of your local record office from your local authority or public library.
We would like to hear about your collection and/or records, even if you are not thinking about donating it to an archive.
If you wish to contact LAGNA, please see our contact details on
our homepage.
Or follow this link for the Hall-Carpenter Archives (national archives of LGBT activism) located in the Library, London School of Economics and Political Science.
* lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered
Text by Robert Thompson, Tamsin Bookey and Judy Vaknin.
Web version by Oliver Merrington, June 2007
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