#queer library

[makingqueerhistory]

Hi! I don’t know if this is something you’ve touched on before, but when borrowing/requesting queer books from local libraries I wanted to encourage people to include children’s books in that practice too! Schools and libraries are responsible for a significant portion of sales in the children’s market, so children’s authors tend to be disproportionately affected by book bans, and showing interest in these stories can be particularly helpful. That’s all; thank you so much for running this blog!

Thank you for pointing this out! I couldn't agree more! Generally, children can't/won't be requesting queer books from the library, so a part of making space for children in the queer community is making sure queer children's literature is supported and accessible.

I put some of my personal recommendations in a handy dandy list:

(Affiliate link)

[conspiracy-dearest]

To anyone in the US who is queer and likes to read, there is an online library that you can get a card to with access to hundreds of books by/for/about queer people!

It's called the Queer Liberation Library! (Linked below)

My current queer book recs:

- What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher

- Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott

- An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green

- Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle

- Wilder Girls by Rory Power

I'm not sponsored or anything, just an avid reader living in a conservative area that wants to spread the word! Let me know if you have any queer book recs!

Happy reading :)

[heyftinally]

Happy Birthday, @queerliblib !

One year of bringing queer lit to our community for free! Thank you to all of the hard work from all of the staff and volunteers who make this amazing resource possible!

[hyprunivers]

Folks!!!! We’re down to the last few days!!! Help us at @queerliblib make an even better library for you!!!

[persephoneflouwers]

Castro 💘💘💘💘💘💘

[amaliazeichnerin]

This is awesome. 🏳️‍🌈

Book bans are on the rise across the US, but even if you want to go read and buy as many books with LGBT+ representation as you can get your greedy little hands on--it's hard to know what you don't know :/

The Queer Books Database lists over 3,500+ fiction and non-fiction titles in a google docs spreadsheet that lets you search by representation, or just by age, genre, year published, and more. It doesn't just track LGBT+ rep but also tags for people of color, disability, mental health, neurodivergence, fat rep, older characters, and religion!

You can use the database to search for:

multiple identities at once--find rep for a schizophrenic asexual lesbian, an autistic black boy, or a non-binary soldier with tinnitus

age appropriate books--search for children's books, junior chapter books, teen titles, and YA

non-fiction education--this includes biographies and memoirs, self-help, mental health, sexual education, LGBT+ history, legal resources, and affirming spiritual texts

trope/setting/time period--get a list of ghostly paranormals, queer fiction set in africa, gay regency romances, enemies-to-lovers, dark academia, and tons more!

Using the database, supporting my patreon, or buying me a ko-fi also really helps out the autistic transgender librarian who put this all together during the pandemic! Please share and reblog if you can~

[novella-november]

Do you have the Libby library app?

If not, download it to your phone, and under "Add library card" select the button to search for a library and start typing in "queer"...

Sign up with an email, no actual address required, and you are good to go 🏳️‍🌈

[ID: A screenshot of the Queer Liberation Library Libby main page, showing 6 titles, one of which is an audio book. The titles displayed are the Trans Teen Survival Guide; Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the next); We Will Be Shelter: Poems for Survival; Tomboy Survival Guide; A Burst of Light and Other Essays; and Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction. End ID]

(thank you @teddypoi-qd for the ID!]

EDIT: Here is the Queer Liberation Library's donation page!

[mossworth]

Guys, queers. Specifically my fellow queers.

I work at a library. We do this thing where, every so often, we weed the collection. It hurts to see books go, but it's necessary to make sure there's room in the library for new materials.

I have seen so much support for the library in text, and I've seen folks pass around those beautiful "queer your library" flyers. Keep doing that. That's great. Nothing wrong with that. But you HAVE to turn your words into action. We MUST remember to actually go to our local organizations and libraries and actually, with our own fucking hands, interact with these materials we want to see more of.

My branch is medium-sized for a library, maybe a little small. We don't have as many materials as I'd like, but we have fundamentals. Tell me why, even with all the verbal support I've gotten from my local community for the library as a resource for our LGBT+ community, every single trans biography and a good chunk of our vaguely queer theory books were on the list. This isn't a scheme to take the books off the shelves, it isn't another bigoted American governmental push. The only thing we look at when we weed is how long it's been since the last time the item was checked out.

Three years.

No one in my community interacted in any meaningful way with the few books on trans life and history we physically had on the shelves for three fucking years.

I promise you the materials you want and need are there, but this isn't a horde. This isn't a static safety net. You have to use them. You MUST use them or, in the future, maybe in three years, they *won't* be there anymore.

This isn't a vague post, there's no one person I'm hinting at or calling out. I'm not even talking directly to anyone who's directly in my line of sight. I just want everyone to hear this. Big library, small library, whatever. Doesn't matter. Please, we cannot be losing our shelf visibility like this.

[sarahmeeps]

Book mail day!

Special thanks to Victoria Scott, dressingdykes.com, and to Yesterqueers for the rest of the recommendations. I can't wait to get started :)

[elletromil]

So I do a lot of book suggestion with my public libraries because, well, I'm a big reader and I can't buy all of the books, no matter how much i might want to.

Anyway, it always completely baffles me when, with series - especially when its in ebook form where you can see fairly easily on Libby whether or not there is another installment after the one you're currently reading - *I* have to suggest the next book for it to be picked up.

And not in a 'why is the librarian not buying it' way, but rather in a 'why are people not asking for it????'

For exemple, I've been reading a series of like 5-6 books total. I suggested my library get the first ebook, suggestion got accepted, i read the book and liked it well enough. About 10-ish people were in the hold queue. Of course that doesn't mean they actually liked it but whatever.

I suggested the second book, and because of the nature of ebooks reservation, some people got to read it before me. Ok fine. I read it, about 6-7 people are on the hold queue when i finish it.

Guess what? No one asked for the third book.

For EVERY book in the series, i had to ask for the next one and i'm just...

For people to read it before me, they had to have an alert on the book so they would know when it becomes available at once. Cuz obviously I have those alerts, but even just checking 5 minutes after the notification, there would be at least 2-3 people with a hold on the book already.

And its not even a 'oh, the library will get the ebooks at a certain time every months/few months so that's why it wasn't available yet'

I finished the second to last book of the series recently. It had been available since like october-ish. I had actually started back then, but since I'm not a fan of reading ebooks, I couldnt finish the book in time, so into the hold queue I went.

I know that public library. I know how often they get their ebook. If anyone had asked for the last book, it would be available already.

It wasn't.

Do people not know they can suggest books? Is the process too obscure for them?

Anyway, there is no point to this post except to say, my good peeps, you can make books (or dvds or games or whatever kind of item your public library offer) suggestion! You usually can do it online!

If you can't find where exactly, usually just googling 'purchase suggestion' or 'reccomand a title' with the name of your public library will get you to the right page

And if you're still not sure, you should ask your librarian, they'll be happy to tell you how!

[makingqueerhistory]

how do you even go about finding queer friendly libraries or queer owned bookstores?

This is a complicated question depending on where you live. I wish I had a handy-dandy list for you, but unfortunately I don't. But here is my experience, which is largely informed by a lot of privilege.

A great way to see what your library is open to is visiting your library, look at their displays (especially around pride month) and see if there are any queer books dotted in there. If there aren't that doesn't necessarily mean that the librarians themselves are unfriendly to the idea. It might be in accordance to local regulations.

But one big thing you can do to effect how queer friendly your local library is use it. Give them data that they can point to and show their board to say that queer books are in demand.

That can look as obvious as requesting books or as subtle as picking up queer or queer adjacent books and putting them on the carts to show that someone was looking at them.

I don't want to assume your experience or your country of origin, but if you are going to a larger city, you should be able to use a search engine to look up if there are any queer specific bookstores there.

Otherwise you can also contact local queer orgs, and see if they have a library themselves, because some do! Again this varies greatly depending on where you live.

That being said, libraries in my experience give so much room for advocacy. There is a reason I talk so often about requesting queer books, and checking them out from libraries. Honestly libraries are one of the best places to make big waves with small actions.

[culturefit]

Everyone reading this should know that you can only sign up if you have a US mailing address, so just read the membership policy before you get too excited and try to sign up.

⚠️PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT⚠️

The Queer Liberation Library is, as the name suggests, a digital library centered around queer literature. They offer library cards to anyone in any place, all you need in order to sign up is an email address. Then you can access their catalog online or through apps like Libby.

When I signed up I received an email that said there’s sometimes a waitlist, but I should have my card within a week or else someone would get back to me within that timeframe to explain if I had to wait longer. I ended up getting my card after only a couple of days.

Their website is very accessible and easy to use. My favorite features are the button at the bottom of the screen which lets you switch between light and dark mode, and the Quick Exit banner along the top of the page that doesn’t go away regardless of where you navigate on the site.

This is such an incredible resource and I can’t believe I didn’t know about it until very recently. I want every queer person to know about it! They have accounts on most of the major social media sites (such as tiktok, Instagram, even here on tumblr at @queerliblib). There’s also a place on their website where you can suggest books they should add to their catalog.

After you get your card, I’d suggest the first book you read to be Beyond the Gender Binary by Alok Vaid-Menon. It is a short but powerful little book that I think is an incredibly concise analysis of societal gender-based discrimination, and a great place to start a lot of really important discussions. I listened to the audiobook this morning (it was only an hour long, which is a win for my trash attention span) and I couldn’t believe how good it was for so little page time.

I will absolutely be reading the rest of the Pocket Change Collective (the series which Beyond the Gender Binary is part of) and I can’t wait to see what I’ll learn from them.

[queerliblib]

Nine volunteers are ensuring anyone in the U.S. has access to over 1,200 books with LGBTQ themes and authors.

-Jay Valle, This Library is Offering Free LGBTQ Books Amid the Wave of School Bans

[hyprunivers]

Are you kidding me??? We’re down to the last 2 days??? I’m not physically or psychologically build to maintain this kind of energetic optimism for a full month!!! 2 days left to share and donate and then I can fully implode!!! BOOK BLITZ IS GO!! @queerliblib

[brinconvenient]

For those brave soldiers in the Queer Terminology Purity War, evidence that there's nothing new under the sun.

This t-shirt is on display at the Gerber-Hart Library and Archives in Chicago. It belonged to bisexual and queer activist Melissa Ann Merry, who donated her materials from 1990-1995 to the library.

The shirt was part of the 1991 queer woman activism against the malicious portrayal of lesbian and bisexual women in "Basic Instinct"

Policing each other's language will never lead to our liberation.

Kill the cop in your head and be the slur you want to see in the world!

Queer as in Fuck You!

[thebibliosphere]

A quick update while @queerliblib is being run off their feet across social media, they have reached just over $6k in their first 24 hours. That's 41% of their goal!

Thank you to everyone here, signal boosting and donating! Please keep the signal going even if you cannot donate. People need to know there are organizations like @queerliblib fighting back against the wave of hatred and book bans we're seeing at the moment.

(ID in alt)

Hello Tumblr! I am posting this on behalf of the Queer Liberation Library, who don't yet have a Tumblr, but have promised me they're working on it. Some of you may remember them from the Twitter Poll I was involved in a few months ago where Hunger Pangs: True Love Bites beat multiple award-winning, trad-pub queer authors with a hefty 69% (nice).

For those of you unaware, the Queer Liberation Library, or QLL, is an organization fighting to build a vibrant, flourishing queer future by connecting LGBTQ+ people with literature, information, and resources that celebrate the unique and empowering diversity of our community.

And today, June 12th, 2023, they launched their fundraiser to try and reach 15k so that they can start purchasing digital licensing for queer media and hopefully open their digital doors to library patrons across the US in 2023 with as many queer and trans books as possible.

You can check out their newly redesigned website here:

(If you are in an unsafe space and need to exit the webpage quickly, there is a quick exit bar at the top that redirects to a weather page. When I spoke to them about their web design they were also open to accessibility suggestions and are potentially working on a dark mode for those of us who need it.)

If you know me, you know I am unequivocally pro-library, both as a reader and a queer writer. But with the current rise of homophobia, transphobia, and the proposed ban on books taking hold in certain States, the importance of having protected access queer books cannot be over-emphasized enough.

The QLL aims to protect that access, aiming to provide FREE access to queer and trans media (ebook and audio) to patrons regardless of location within the United States.

They are funded entirely through regular donations from their supporters and their now annual Pride fundraiser, where they hope to afford the cost of not just library books but also maintaining their web presence and staff.

I cannot emphasize enough how much this project is a labor of love for everyone involved and its importance.

And just to clarify, I am not involved in any way beyond raising awareness. When QLL reached out and asked me to retweet their fundraiser tweets, I readily agreed and offered to post about it on Tumblr because I believe in their mission and the world they are trying to build.

One where queer and trans books can't be banned or taken off of shelves because of bigotry and hatred.

If you would like to donate to the cause, you can do so here:

They've already surpassed their first 2k, and it'd be absolutely wonderful if we could help them reach their next milestone. And if you can't give, please consider signal boosting this post.

You can also follow QLL at:

Twitter: @queerliblib 

Instagram: @queerliblib 

Tiktok: @queerliblib