The Los Angeles Blade recently featured the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries, the largest repository of LGBTQ history materials in the world. The article by Scott Stiffler—headlined "Millions of reasons to visit USC’s One Archives"—highlights several ONE Archives collections. It also highlights how the collections have informed new creative and scholarly work, from Academy Award-nominated films like Milk to such ONE Archives exhibitions as Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A.
The article also includes interviews with ONE Archives Foundation Executive Director Jennifer Gregg and ONE Archives Director Joseph Hawkins:
“Archives can be pretty daunting places,” Hawkins said, describing his team’s work as “time-consuming… But we try to unpack these boxes and tell you the stories” (A single banker’s box worth of materials can cost $500 or more to process. Tasks include imposing an intellectual order, placing materials in an acid-free environment, and creating a finding aid, so those materials can be easily accessed by researchers.)
Echoing Gregg’s observation about the interactive aspect of the Archives, Hawkins noted, “It’s transportive to be in the presence of these materials. When people come here, they’re getting in touch with their history, and we provide objects that illustrate how things came to be… They move you.”