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Out of the Box: 2SLGBTQ+ Libraries & Archives Outreach and the Potential for Activism

Matt Rohweder (he/him)

Wilfrid Laurier University

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About Me

My name is Matt Rohweder, temporary head of Archives and Special Collections (as of July 1, 20206), the Instruction Coordinator and a Liaison Librarian at Wilfrid Laurier University. I am a cis white male and a member of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. I was the 2025 President of the Ontario Library Association.

Four things to know about me:

I have worked with 2SLGBTQIA+ archives and libraries for a long time
I foreground lived experiences in my classroom
Not at all obsessed with queer history
I will talk about my dog a lot, if you let me

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Finding Myself In the Archives

Let me begin by saying, while I am a practicing librarian, I am an archivist at heart.

During my graduate studies, I studied queer pulp novels, which eventual turned to looking at the preservation of those materials in queer archvies, such as Toronto’s ArQuives. Unsurprisingly, this lead to my eventually my own transition to librarianship/archives. I then began volunteering at the ArQuives even getting the chance to work directly with those books I spent so much time studying. I then moved onto working at the University of Toronto Archives while getting my MLS. And eventually ended up at Wilfrid Laurier; however, I did not let archives ever get to far away from me through research and community work.

I believe that Archives are one of places where we can most easily find ourselves - representation of our histories and shared past that can better lead us to understand our identity and how our communities got to where they are today. Anytime I enter a queer archive - and I have been to many - I always have this sense of coming home. Of knowing that I’m going to delve into a pile of boxes and unearth some aspect of myself that I will just know fits right when I see it. This idea led me to think about how based queer archives engage with their communities. Outside of inviting community members into their spaces to explore their collections, how do these institutions really connect with community. How do they educate? And how can that work translate to spaces of activism?

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Overview of the Project

Gay Archivist Newsletter Box 1 (452.3 – CLGA Newsletters #1-15), File: 470-02/1977, Contents: Gay Archivist: Newsletter of the Canadian Gay Archives, Number 1 May 1977

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What is this project? And why this project?

“Each [archival collection] brings to life a moment or episode in the struggle against homophobia. Each tells a story, mostly forgotten and often surprising, of courage, resilience, and resistance to opposition. Each has the power to enlighten us about history and about how change happens.”

John D’Emilo, Queer Legacies, Stories from Chicago’s LGBTQ Archives

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Beginnings

Studies focused on queer archives and libraries often fall into four major categories:

the origins of these institutions as archival heritage centres
the experience of working and researching in the archives
addressing the central question of what, exactly, constitutes the queer archive
exploring the notion of archives as activism

“Club Colby's Toronto, Canada,” The ArQuives Digital Exhibitions, accessed June 18, 2026, https://digitalexhibitions.arquives.ca/items/show/481.

Key examples of some of these studies include:

- Rebecka Sheffield’s Documenting Rebellions, which chronicles four 2SLGBTQIA+ archives – Toronto’s ArQuives, New York’s Herstory Archives, The ONE Archive in Los Angels, and The June L. Mazer Lesbian Archive in West Hollywood. Sheffield’s driving interest in these archives is not to interrogate their existence or practices, but rather “to show how this cohort of community archives has been affected by the very same combination of socio-political and economic factors that shape the cultural history that they preserve.”

- Rob Cover narrows his exploration to better understand their use of strategic management. Namely, he discusses how strategic management, including annual reports and strategic plans, enhances these institutions’ status and overall engagement within their communities.

- Daniel Marshall and Zeb Tortorici’s edited volume, Turning Archival: The Life of the Historical in Queer Studies. They and their contributors explore the possibilities of the queer archive and consider how, “insofar as the queer archival turn might be inseparable from people’s experiences of being turned on, intellectually or eroti-cally, by what one discovers in the past, it is also inseparable from developments which have seen this emphasis change understandings of what an archive is (or what it can be).”

- Elspeth Brown furthers this this call to action by focusing on Toronto’s ArQuives (formerly the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archive). Brown calls attention to the erasure of trans, Black, Indigenous, and people of colour from the ArQuives and questions whether such archives can continue to function as an activist organization, establishing that from a non-white and non-cis perspective, these institutions may be no longer necessary.

This project builds upon these discussions surrounding queer community archives, especially their activist potential by looking at the work community archives does around outreach and education. How can the educational or outreach offerings utilize queer history to best speak to current generations and empower them to find their own voices as activists?

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Intentions

I sought to explore the kinds of education programs that 2SLGBTQIA+ libraries and archives offer to ensure queer history remains alive. This project intends to examine the work of these libraries and archives in the contest of current queer life and politics.

Education programs (or outreach initiatives) play the function of classrooms, which help ensure a shared understanding of how a community’s history enriches and informs its current struggles.

I sought to explore how, through outreach, can archives become sites of activism.

“GO-GO MATTACHINE,” The History Project | Documenting LGBTQ Boston, accessed March 31, 2025, https://historyproject.omeka.net/items/show/62.

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Framing the project

Rebeka Sheffield - archives provide context for the present

Community archives play an essential role in preventing the erasure of marginalized communities

bell hooks’ theories on engaged teaching and political classrooms and empowering learners

Archival futurity

Engaged Pedagogy

Michelle Caswell’s Urgent Archives

Information Activism

Cait McKinney’s exploration of materials and processes constituting the collective, often unspectacular labor that sustains social move-

ments.

“Queer Bart,” The ArQuives Digital Exhibitions, accessed March 31, 2025, https://digitalexhibitions.arquives.ca/items/show/349.

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Defining Outreach

Events
Exhibitions
Online modules
Panels, discussions, talks
Everything else

The categories of outreach:

For the purposes of this project, I adopted a very open interpretation of what outreach is…

“Lost Archives, Found Archives, and Missing Context” Gerber/Hart LGBTQ+ Library and Archives. Exhibition. April 2025

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Engaged Classrooms & Activism

When the classroom is truly engaged, it’s dynamic. It’s fluid. It’s always changing.

bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress

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Engaged Classrooms & Activism

Queer archives, by publicly sharing 2SLGBTQIA+ heritage and history, are finding new ways to reach their community and the public. They are teaching and educating and finding powerful avenues to fight back against oppression. In short, queer community archives are revolutionizing the idea of the archival classroom and living up to their potential and promise of resistance through the preservation of our heritage.

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Archival Outreach as Politically Charged Classrooms

Showcasing the past can function as sites of resistance
“archival endeavors should not be about documenting the past, nor even about imagining the future… but about building a liberatory now.” M. Caswell, Urgent Archives

When we view outreach as doing more than informing, but see it as a form of activism, archives become politically charged classrooms.

“Radical Resistance” Hackney Newsletter, February 2022. Bishopsgate Archives, BISHOPSGATE/2/122

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Queer Resistance & Queer Joy: An Example of outreach as engaged pedagogy

“Queer Resistence, Queer Joy.” Queer History Boston. Online Exhibition. November 2025 https://historyproject.omeka.net/exhibits/show/queerresistance/home

Personal photo

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Gerber/Hart’s Elder Queer Panel: An Example of outreach as engaged pedagogy

Promotional Photo. Gerber/Hart and Dorothy's, Photo: Vanessa Lara

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Examples: Canadian Contexts

Gay Archivist Newsletter Box 1 (452.3 – CLGA Newsletters #1-15), File: 470-02/1977, Contents: Gay Archivist: Newsletter of the Canadian Gay Archives, Number 1 May 1977

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The ArQuives

The ArQuives includes a wide range of outreach, from events, to digital collections and exhibits, to education modules designed to bring 2SLGBTQ+ heritage and history into the classroom.

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The Transgender Archives @ UVic

Similarly, the Transgender Archives engages in sustained outreach that is rooted in engaged pedagogy with a number of digitized exhibits.

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The Lesbian Pulp Fiction Collection @ Mount Saint Vincent University

The Lesbian Pulp Fiction Collection features a digital exhibit on contested books, focused on the the 1952 obscenity case against the National News distribution company.

Direct parallels and links to current discourses around 2SLGBTQIA+ contested literature

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Ottawa’s Trans Library

Not necessarily an archive with digital outreach or education, but still participating as an example of engaged pedagogy.

zine making workshop - that can incorporate elements of trans history and contribute to the growing collection of documentation about trans lives and the communities history
here is the potential for memory work to happen here through the political nature of the trans library as classroom

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What comes next?

Gay Archivist Newsletter Box 1 (452.3 – CLGA Newsletters #1-15), File: 470-02/1977, Contents: Gay Archivist: Newsletter of the Canadian Gay Archives, Number 1 May 1977

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Next Steps & Future Plans

A future planned publication that would include storied and examples from many 2SLGBTQIA+ archives

Maybe WLU Press?
A proposal and CFP is in development

This is an ongoing project and I am unsure of what the end goal is.

Identify gaps - i.e. where are the BIPOC voices and heritage?
Think about how the work being done at libraries and archives and counter or push back against trans and queer erasure

“No More Shit! Toronto '81,” The ArQuives Digital Exhibitions, accessed May 8, 2026, https://digitalexhibitions.arquives.ca/items/show/508.

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References

For a complete list of references for this presentation & project, please use the QR code below. Thank you!

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Contact me

mrohweder@wlu.ca

https://bit.ly/MattRLinkedIN

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Questions &

Thank You!