Indy Public Library, Indy Pride Announce Partnership for LGBTQ+ Collection

The Indianapolis Public Library and Indy Pride are teaming up to create one of the largest LGBTQ collections at a public library in the United States.

More than 7,000 items from the Chris Gonzalez Library and Archive at the Health Foundation will be moved to the Central Library, where a permanent exhibit will also be located. 

Gonzalez was a community activist and founder of Indiana Youth Group who passed away in 1994.

Chris Handberg with Indy Pride, says the collection started when people were diagnosed with HIV and started to contract AIDS, and they gave their personal books and materials to Michael Bohr, who curated the collection and recently retired.

Handberg hopes the collection can lead to broader access to the stories and insights into the LGBTQ community.

“There is a real level of excitement in our community that we have this place where we can go find these materials and feel safe there and that’s very rare for our community,” Handberg says.

Deb Lambert is the library's director of collection management.  She says materials from the collection will be catalogued and integrated into Central Library.

“People will be able to search our catalogue and find it in terms that they put in there. We want to be very careful labeling it in the catalogue,” Lambert says.

The goal is to launch an opening reception in September 2019.