Dear Editor:
As a lesbian, a research scientist and a librarian, I have never been taken seriously by the Gerber/Hart Library or allowed to volunteer there for more than placing stickers on items for the book sale. I have lived in Illinois since 2007. I wanted to find access to research resources and acceptance as a writer at the Gerber/Hart Library, so I attended the annual Pride readings and spoke to the Karen Sendziak. As a lesbian, libraries are enduring sources of information and acceptance over the course of my life.
In Chicago, I dreamed of a city where the LGBTQ archives in open libraries would be resources I could explore to write independent scholarship about our lives in workplaces and organizations. As a social scientist, I faced a lifetime of partial information, partial access and even closed access to LGBT resources.
Chicago turned out to be full of challenges I did not anticipate. First, I have no university-level affiliation to conduct research, so the databases carried by schools like Northwestern University and the University of Chicago were not open to general members of the working-class public. The public-college system was open, but I saw that many people never venture into it unless they are going back to school, and their collections are not exhaustive or specific. The public libraries are heroic in providing working-class Chicagoans a rich collection of literature. In addition, I imagined starting an online school where people could share information, courses and research resources for the general working-class public reader.
Second, I have a long-term project about the sociological conditions for success in a gender-diverse workplace with a theoretical outline that I want to pursue, so I was attracted to the Gerber/Hart Library archive description.
Third, in the last two years I achieved a master's in library and information science because I was so committed to the importance of libraries to the world. On all of these points of interest I was rejected and stonewalled in the great city of Chicago. On several occasions, Sendziak has taken my name and listened to my offer to: (1) volunteer at the library, (2) volunteer in the archive and (3) work unpaid to develop a better catalog for the archive, when she could not provide me with a guide to the archive collections or any professional help in my areas of research interest.
On each occasion, she told me that she would have to speak to the board, that she would give my name to the board and that she would contact me when she knew more about her staff turnover. Karen was polite to me, and I continued to support the Gerber/Hart Library events. I was offered one opportunity to place stickers on items for a book sale, and I showed up and did that. During the book sale set up I was told by the two women who regularly staff the library that they are bisexual, not lesbians, and I felt challenged by them to respond. I said that was cool, I accept their identification.
I asked about lesbian writing and reading groups and I was told those are no longer happening. I was curious about starting a writing group and I was given the names of some local people outside the library I could ask. Karen mentioned that someone with inherited money gave the library what it needed. I suspected that might be Karen or a friend, but the person was never named. Karen seemed to be the sole decision-maker at the library, but I assumed there was a board or an organized group who was rejecting my application to volunteer and my research interests.
By accident, I was a stand-in reader for the regional Lambda Literary Award finalists one year at Gerber/Hart, and I enjoyed that event. I am a social scientist, a librarian, a teacher and an interested lesbian, so what more does Gerber/Hart want? Is Karen Sendziak the only person making decisions for the library? Is Gerber/Hart friendly to everyone in the community? Note: I have no criminal record, no psychiatric record, no history of violence or any physical or mental challenge that would exclude me from library work, archival research or discourse. I have taught college for more than 20 years in different places in our country.
I welcome more investigation from Windy City Times so that I can understand my own experience.
Sincerely,
Kimberly Ayn Reed,
Ph.D., M.A., MLIS
aka Kim Reed
Chicago
