The LGBTQ Iowa Archives & Library serves as an oral history resource center to aid in the preservation of queer history throughout Iowa. We have twenty-five lendable oral history kits to share with community members throughout the state who wish to do oral history interviews. We also offer training on how to conduct oral history interviews to support anyone in capturing our stories. If you’d like to get involved with our oral history work, sign up to volunteer with us!
The LGBTQ Iowa Archives & Library also serves as a home and affiliate to two oral history projects in Iowa:
Transgender Oral History Project of Iowa
The Transgender Oral History Project of Iowa recognizes, collects, preserves, and celebrates the lives and stories of transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people across the state of Iowa, while simultaneously building a digital archive of transgender history. A primary goal of the project is to empower transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming community members to collect and preserve their own histories by training trans-identified people in the methodology of oral history.
The project also looks to the trans community in defining its content and the definition of its boundaries (participants, questions, etc.). Including transgender and gender non-conforming people as both storytellers and interviewers engages the entire community in history-making. It also disrupts possible forms of oppression and violence trans people encounter when telling their stories to community outsiders. To become an interviewer or narrator, fill out our get involved survey and note that you’d like to work with the Transgender Oral History Project of Iowa.
LGBT Oral Histories of Central Iowa
We are affiliated with the LGBT Oral Histories of Central Iowa project and will be housing a copy of their materials. LGBT Oral Histories of Central Iowa is a project made up of interviews gathered by students of Grinnell College. Our goal is to record the memories of people in our local community who identify as LGBT. We want to ensure that the valuable histories of LGBT Iowans are preserved and shared with future generations. We are affiliated with the LGBT Oral Histories of Central Iowa project and will be housing a copy of their materials. Visit their website to learn more or get involved.
