General Collections

Visual Materials
Photos, posters, artwork, wall calendars, slides and postcards.

Rare Books
From an 1896 first edition of a book by John Addington Symonds to a signed, limited-edition volume of Audre Lourde's poetry, the Rare Books Collection preserves hard-to-find mementos of our history and culture.  Access is restricted to research use, though down the road we hope to digitize some of the older volumes.

Subject Reference Files
Mostly clippings from mainstream periodicals, organized by subject (e.g., "film," "parenting," "the military").  This collection also includes files about specific people and places.

Audio Recordings
Music, talk, a little of everything.  This collection is largely unprocessed.  Formats include vinyl LPs, cassettes, reel-to-reel tape and CDs.

Theater Programs
This collection preserves souvenir books from stage productions, primarily from the northeastern United States, principally from the 1970s to 1990s.

Film and Video
Most of the collection consists of television shows (In the Life, The Golden Girls, Donahue, etc.), though there are some feature films, documentaries, and home footage of community events.  Through the kindness of WPVI-TV and the Temple University Urban Archives, we have copies of Philadelphia's first gay public-affairs TV series, Out Front  (1975-1976).  We have also received several donations of male erotic films from the 1960s to 1980s.

NOTE: The Archives will not copy or lend films and videos.  Researchers may view them only on site by appointment.

Badges and Buttons
Largely unprocessed, this collection includes buttons and badges from the 1960s to 2000s.  Some were donated mounted on boards after being used in displays or exhibits.

Cloth Objects
T-shirts, sports uniforms, banners, baseball caps, etc.