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The DIY Archive

My phone buzzes in my pocket. The screen tells me that the call is coming into the Rainbow History Project’s (RHP) phone number. I’m at my day job, but I pick it up anyway. We have no office space, no physical location, so all calls have to be routed to an RHP board member, and I am the nominee. A woman’s voice, throaty and enthusiastic, is on the other end. She tells me she is a former president of the Washington, DC, chapter of PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). She has also done a lot of work through a local hospital on the subject of gender nonconforming children. She will shortly be moving to a new house, downsizing. She does not know what PFLAG and related materials she has on hand, and she won’t know until she starts to pack. But she would like to donate the materials to an organization that can archive them and make them available. Would RHP appreciate this donation? Even before she has finished talking, the wheels of my mind are cranked and turning. Other than a couple of oral histories, and a few papers related to a DC gay youth group, RHP has little material about the LGBT youth experience in and around Washington. PFLAG is a historically important organization, and its papers would help us flesh out the story of local LGBT history, rendering visible a constituent group now underserved in our archive. From these perspectives, of course we’d love the materials. Our storage unit, though, is full to bursting, and she doesn’t know how many papers she has to donate. Can we fit them into a corner in storage? If not, is there a board member’s house or apartment where we could store the files temporarily? Furthermore, who is going to help the donor sort through her materials and pick