June is National LGBT Pride Month in remembrance of the Stonewall riots in June 1969, the beginning of the modern gay liberation movement. IU East has always taken an interest in nurturing and empowering our gay students (and their straight allies) – the LGBTQS Alliance is one of our most popular organizations, and many university employees have Safe Zone training, offering a supportive and affirming place for LGBT students to discuss any issue that weighs on them. And the library has reliable resources to learn about LGBT history or the issues facing the homosexual community today.

We have resources for any interest or age group. For scholarly needs, databases like LGBT Studies are great starting points, including sources like films, documentaries, interviews, and archival footage that explore the social, cultural, and political evolution of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people throughout modern history. And for more traditional, journal article databases, GenderWatch offers hundreds of thousands of articles on wide-ranging topics affecting the LGBT community including sexuality, religion, and social roles from the last several decades. GenderWatch particularly offers unique and distinctive voices that can often be overlooked in mainstream sources. And for US government documents, try the collection at the Library of Congress.

And if you prefer books, we have titles like Out of the Ordinary: Representations of LGBT Lives by Ian Rivers, Out and Running: Gay and Lesbian Candidates, Elections, and Policy Representation by Donald Haider-Markel, From the Closet to the Courtroom: Five LGBT Rights Lawsuits That Have Changed Our Nation and Right to Be Parents: LGBT Families and the Transformation of Parenthood by Carlos Ball, Queer Women and Religious Individualism by Melissa Wilcox, and Make Your Own History: Documenting Feminist and Queer Activism in the 21st Century by Lyz Bly that explore every facet of gay identity. We’ve also prepared a libguide bringing together sources across the spectrum in one convenient place.

And for material focused on teaching children, we have plenty of books, as well. Recently, we’ve added new titles like I am Jazz by Jessica Herthel, Donovan’s Big Day by Lesléa Newman, and 10,000 Dresses by Marcus Ewert to improve our already extensive collection of LGBT-friendly children’s books. There’s something for everyone!

Any questions? Ask us at iueref@iue.edu!