By Tess Goldwasser
What is your role in the GLBTRT?
I’m the Chair of the Resources Committee.
What does the GLBTRT mean to you?
It’s one of my “homes” in ALA, the professional association I have been a member of for many years. I feel comfortable meeting and working with other GLBT librarians, and that has rarely happened in my places of employment. I want to help other GLBT folk, and I think working on GLBTRT committees has enabled that.
Are you involved in ALA in other ways?
Yes, I have been a member and chair of the ALCTS Catalog Form and Function Committee/Interest Group, and a member and chair of the OLAC Cataloging Policy Committee.
What professional work do you perform?
I have been the Head Cataloging Librarian at Loyola Marymount University for the past 11 years. I have been working in academic and research library cataloging departments since I became a librarian almost 25 years ago.
What would you like to tell us about your personal life?
I am a native Angeleno (although the rest of my family have moved across the country), I love travelling (especially to tropical islands), and I volunteer a lot (including as a cataloger at One National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries, and as the Archivist of the California Men’s Gatherings). I finally legally married my husband Patrick on December 26, 2013 (we met in 1982).
What are you most proud of?
Helping to organize and participate in demonstrations and civil disobedience actions in response to the AIDS crisis as a founding member of ACT UP LA.
Who inspires you?
Brave people who are true to their authentic selves, help their community, and stand up to power. Many of the ones I’ve met are no longer with us.
What is your favorite holiday and how do you celebrate?
Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day weekend are spent with about 200 other gay and bisexual men at California Men’s Gatherings that I help to organize, and I’ve celebrated Gay Pride Day many times in many cities in the U.S., Canada, and England.
If you could be transported into the fictional world of any book, where would you go?
The vampire novels of Anne Rice, or Tolkien’s Middle Earth, but I would want to be able to come back!
What do you have to say about the future of libraries?
It will be challenging to stay relevant to future generations, but libraries should continue to preserve, honor, and disseminate culture and scholarship to everyone.
Where would you like to see GLBTRT go in the future?
Continue to be a place for GLBT library workers to meet and gather, act as a voice for us in our professional association, and develop more ways to help GLBT library users (and to aid library workers to serve GLBT library users).
