ONE Archives Arrangement and Description Project

Summary

ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives is the oldest Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) organization in the U.S. and it holds the largest collection of LGBT materials in the world. ONE began as the earliest national gay publication, ONE Magazine, in 1953; it later developed into an Institute with the first certificates in gay studies. In 1994, ONE merged with Jim Kepner’s National Gay Archives and since 2000 has functioned as an archive at the University of Southern California. UCLA Film & Television Archive has one of the largest collections of media materials in the world. ONE deposited its moving image collection, including film prints, negatives and tapes with UCLA in 2006. As a result of pre-application review from CLIR, ONE and the UCLA Film & Television Archive are enhancing their partnership by collaborating and integrating their projects to make these historically significant materials accessible. The collections document the creation of a forum to discuss sexuality in the 1950s, gay rights, pioneering gay activists, AIDS, religion, gays in the military and gay journalism. The ONE Archives Arrangement and Description Project will catalog 30 collections/sub-collections (935 feet) of archival materials of pioneering LGBT institutions, writers and activists. These collections are critical in documenting the evolution of social attitudes in the 20th century. Though use has been sporadic, the collections are almost completely inaccessible.