Temporary Exhibit: Greater Minnesota Two-Spirit & LGBTQIA+ History Map Resources

GLAM is an acronym for "Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums." Often, these institutions can also be called "cultural heritage institutions" (CHIs). While they all play crucial roles in the preservation and dissemination of knowledge, and provide important public education about history, the arts, and so much more, the fields and institutions themselves--and their roles in history--are not neutral. Professionals in the fields of museum and curatorial studies, library and archival and information sciences, and public history education have ongoing conversations about how their institutions have also played parts in larger systems of colonialism, racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia, and more. As students engaging with, uncovering, and researching history yourselves, you get to enter into these important and complex conversations, too.

Let's look at some succinct definitions provided by Katie Hemsworth and Ysabel Castle in their book Spatial Humanities and Digital Storytelling: Critical Historical Approaches (licensed under a CC BY-SA 4.0 License): 

Galleries are curator-driven and highly selective, with a primary focus on various forms of art (visual art, sound installations, textiles, and so on). Like other GLAM institutions, galleries are rapidly changing with the rise of digital technologies and digital (or crypto) currency that reimagine the meaning and value of art, collection, collector, ownership, and domain.

Libraries tend to take in and provide access to individual items, including digital and analogue media such as books, audiovisual materials, and maps. Libraries tend to be more user-driven and items are generally available to the public (although often require registration and come with borrowing privileges or digital licensing). Many digital libraries are also user-driven and sometimes crowd-sourced, with some vetting from the institutions before making records available.

Archives typically house more “complete” groups of works that are chosen under relatively strict archival acquisition policy. Preserving context of the collection is a major focus for archives, including regard for provenance. Access to archives tends to be more restricted, although this has changed to some extent with the digitization of archival materials and born-digital data.

Museums are cultural heritage institutions that collect specific objects for public display, while also storing and preserving artifacts not on display. Museums often rotate public-facing collections and are more likely to respond to public interest of the moment. Curators occupy an important position, providing context for the displays.

Historical Societies, then, are organizations that preserve and educate about history, normally with respect to particular time periods, geographic regions, or communities. They may have their own archives, museums, or libraries!

Historical research is intensive and is rarely ever easy: not everything can or will be preserved, there are material conditions that impact whether certain objects survive the tests of time, and every archive, museum collection, and library has their own basement filled with things that are not yet catalogued or accessible to the public. For every digital collection or digitized archive you find, you can imagine that it is only the tip of an iceberg.

But there are many additional reasons for why you may struggle to find information about LGBTQIA2S+ folks, and about people of the past from other marginalized populations: 

1) Historically, the collection of cultural objects and documents has been very selective. Curation of information about LGBTQIA2S+ folks has not only been neglected over the centuries, but that information has often been purposely destroyed, erased, or vandalized. Materials that do exist in museums and archives are not always catalogued. This means that they are not always easily discoverable by researchers. Sometimes, historically, materials have not been catalogued because they are about LGBTQIA2S+ people. If they are, they may be labeled with terms that are outdated and seen by many as deeply disrespectful.

2) Many objects that end up in museums are a result of colonial conquest and genocide. Conversations are happening all across the world about what to do about those objects, and what these institutions can do to provide public education while acknowledging their historic and ongoing role in colonialism. As a result of historical conflicts, information may not have been preserved or may have been actively destroyed. 

3) Depending on the group you are studying, you may not be permitted to access culturally or historically relevant information if you do not have the permission of that group. 

4) Not all people pass along information in writing. Many cultural groups have strong oral traditions that take precedence, or may have other ways of recording their history materially. These things may not be preserved in tangible form, or may go unrecognized in museum collections unless someone is a member of the original cultural group. Additionally, even if it is recorded and recognized, and a group has given permission to share their history through oral histories or other means, cataloguing and indexing are additional necessary steps. Without a finding aid, database, or a friend in the archives, you may not have a way of knowing that it exists.

This is all to say that just because you cannot find information about a group of people, does not mean they did not or do not continue to exist! When you hit roadblocks, reach out to your librarians, archivists, and professors.

Conversations about the role of GLAM institutions in the present, their colonial histories, and their goals for the future are all constantly ongoing. The conversations are far too extensive to fully cover in this space, but here are some places to start reading if you are interested: