Trans* Collecting at the Schlesinger Library

Abstract

Abstract This article discusses how the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America has addressed issues related to privacy, access, and description with three of its trans* collections: The Ari Kane Papers, the International Foundation for Gender Education (IFGE) Records, and the Mark Ethan Smith Papers. The Kane Papers and the IFGE Records contain extensive materials with potentially sensitive third party content. While legally most personal third party content can be made available to users, librarians and archivists have an ethical responsibility to take personal privacy into consideration when determining how open a collection should be to users. This article also touches upon the limitations of the Library of Congress subject headings for the Smith Papers, acknowledging the challenges of applying these subject headings to describe an individual whose identity falls outside their limited scope.