AIR#08. The Mazer Lesbian Archives

 March is Women's History Month. Archives In Rainbow (AIR) closes March celebrating the Mazer Lesbian Archives. In this way AIR concludes a triptych consisting of three posts dedicated to feminist, lesbian and women archives after celebrating the 50 years of the Lesbian Herstory Archives in AIR#06, and the 90th anniversary of Audre Lorde and her archival legacy in AIR#07.

The June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives was founded in 1981 in Oakland, California, by Lynn Fonfa, Claire Potter, Cherrie Cox and others as the West Coast Lesbian Collections (WCLC). In 1985 the archives moved to West Hollywood, Southern California, in collaboration with activist and researcher Jean Conger and Connexxus Women's Center / Centro de Mujeres of West Hollyood. The WCLC was settled at the home of June L. Mazer and her partner Nancy "Bunny" MacCulloch, members of the South California Women for Understanding (SCWU), in Altadena, California. After Mazer passed away prematurely in 1987, the WCLC took her name as a tribute to her activism and engagement. One year later, the Mazer Lesbian Archives were transferred to the current site in the Werle Building as a donation of the City of West Hollywood. In 1989 the archives created a partnership with UCLA Center for the Study of Women and the UCLA Library Department of Special Collections of the Charles E. Young Research Library.

After more than 40 years of work, the Mazer Lesbian Archives (MLA) has become an important reference for Lesbian collections. They define themselves as a vital lesbian and feminist community resource committed to sharing lesbian history across generations, ethnicity, race, and personal belief systems by collecting, preserving and making available unique memorabilia in a safe and welcoming environment.

Today the MLA has about 60 identified collections, 45 from individuals and 15 from organizations and entities. The MLA website contains the Making Invisible Histories Visible research guide describing the work, the people involved, as well as the lesbian and women's collections that were processed in collaboration with the UCLA Center for the Study of Women and UCLA Library in 2014; the digitized subject files are hosted through UCLA Library Digital Collections website. MLA has also a blog, and the video archive section that allows you to access to a wide range of resources.

                                                       (Image by Edwin Folven / Park La Brea News and Beverly Press) 

   You can learn more about the MLA on their website and their Wikipedia entry. The book Documenting Rebellions: A Study of Four Lesbian and Gay Archives in Queer Times written by Rebecka Taves Sheffield in 2015 includes a chapter dedicated to the MLA.

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