James V. Carmichael Jr.

A central tenet of professional library rhetoric holds that "libraries change lives."
Certainly in the case of the lesbigay population, the meaning of that statement is
literally true, for through reading, many lesbigays first find confirmation of their
identity and learn that they are not alone. Gay actor Stephen Fry writes of the
importance of "slim volume after slim volume cataloguing the pansy path to
freedom" ( Fry 1997, 86), whether that freedom lies solely in alternative sexuality,
or indeed in "freedom of the mind" ( 87 ). Given the minority "identity wars" of the
1990s, such a distinction as Fry makes may indeed be critical, for it is not
inconceivable that lesbigays may find confirmation of their individual identity not
in the lesbigay section of the library collection, but in another section of the library,
or in another realm entirely.

In a repressive social climate, responsibility for serving the lesbigay population
may carry more weight than many librarians wish to bear. After all, librarians have
not always been defined as guardians of the freedom to read; early leaders "avoided
controversial literature and endorsed the librarian as moral censor" ( Geller 1984
[xv]). Sexology texts such as Havelock Ellis Studies in the Psychology of Sex and
Alfred Kinsey Sexual Behavior of the Human Male, as well as novels with a
homoerotic theme, such as Radclyffe Hall The Well of Loneliness ( 1928), were
usually available only upon request from the public librarian. Library catalog
subject headings and classification schemes placed homosexuality with "sexual
perversions" or "criminal behavior," or for more progressive and sympathetic titles,
"mental illness" and its analogs, and broad-minded nonfiction generally concerned
the psychosocial causes of this "disease" ( Streitmayer 1995, 45).

The revolution in personal sexual mores in the 1960s and 1970s was accompa-
nied by a broader judicial distinction between erotica and pornography and more
liberal publishing practices, although some of the titles that came under review

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