“Let’s Not Homosexualize the Library Stacks”: Liberating Gays in the Library Catalog

E n c o u n t E r i n g a b o o k w i t h queer characters and storylines can be a personal or academic milestone—a transformative awakening to selfknowledge. For the more seasoned among us, such a discovery was likely fraught with pathologizing language that reflected the prevailing attitudes of the time. In libraries before the 1970s the books would have been cataloged with the subject heading “Sexual perversion” and shelved alongside books on sex crimes, incest, and pedophilia. Those searching for fictional works about gays and lesbians found themselves identifying with particularly flawed characters whose stories usually ended tragically. These readings often took place in the stacks, in stolen, secret moments. For some, this first experience was the result of directed searches in card catalogs, as Barbara Gittings describes above, while for other readers, like Lillian Faderman, the first book was encountered by accident: