GLBTQ Arts and Literature Archive

http://www.glbtqarchive.com/artsindex.html

This archive of nearly 800 entries is a treasure trove of well-documented entries of queer art throughout history. Covering a variety of figures, movements, and themes of visual, performing, and literary arts, each entry contains an encyclopedic style entry. Though no longer updated, this archive includes the entries from the original glbtq.com database. Entries offer valuable historical and cultural context focused on queer voices that have traditionally been withheld from mainstream conversations concerning art history. The content is organized alphabetically but, sadly, does not include a filter option. However, each entry provides bibliographic citations, giving credibility to the content despite its antiquated look. Because of its wide range of topics covered, its open access, and its historical value, this resource is worth including in this curated reference collection.

Feminine Moments – Queer Feminist Art Worldwide

https://www.femininemoments.dk/

Feminine Moments is a comprehensive online archive and visibility project dedicated to promoting and supporting lesbian, bisexual, and queer women artists globally. Founded in 2003 by Danish visual artist Birthe Havmøller, this no-budget initiative offers an extensive collection of artist statements, exhibition reviews, interviews, and visual artworks. The platform emphasizes inclusivity and accessibility by featuring contributions from a diverse range of artists, including those from underrepresented regions and backgrounds. By centering queer feminist perspectives, Feminine Moments challenges traditional art historical narratives and provides invaluable resources for understanding the intersections of gender, sexuality, and artistic expression. This site is particularly beneficial for public libraries aiming to enhance their collections with materials that reflect diversity, equity, and inclusion in the arts.

Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art – Online Collection

https://lohman.zetcom.net/en/

This online collection of Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, self-described as “a home for LGBTQIA+ artists, scholars, activists, and allies, and a catalyst for discourse on art and queerness,” is organized in a user-friendly and searchable format. Users can explore the museum’s collection of paintings, photographs, sculptures, and mixed media works through its various search features, including date, object type, title, highlights, artists, and recent acquisitions. With 478 unique artists and more than 1,800 individual works, the online catalog includes a high-quality visual of the art and the ability to download. With no paywall, various mediums, an easy-to-use interface, and a growing collection, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art online collection will be a valuable resource to public librarians.

Dance Magazine

https://dancemagazine.com/

Dance Magazine is a website featuring various topics related to dance, including dance education, health and wellness, and dance news. While the resource is not specific to LGBTQ communities, it does feature several articles related to dance as activism and queer representation and voices in the dance community. This resource was chosen because of its user experience, being open access with no ads, navigation, and timeliness. Dance Magazine is also linked to other dance resources and sites, such as Dance Spirit and the Dance Edit. Dance Magazine was also chosen because of the difficulty in finding open access dance community collections and spaces.

LGBT+ Cultural Heritage

https://www.lgbtculturalheritage.com/dance

LGBT+ Cultural Heritage is another web resource with a collection of topics including dance. This resource was created within the last ten years, but appears to only have been updated for two or three after its creation. This resource was chosen out of the same necessity and scarcity needs as Dance Magazine, and represents a pattern of small, niche, grass roots community building efforts. While this resource is not solely dedicated to dance, it offers a starting point for those interested in dance and queer spaces, history, and culture.

The 10% Show Archive

https://gerberhart.org/the-10-show

The 10% Show collection from the Gerber/Hart LGBTQ+ Library & Archives is a small, but impactful collection of television episodes about the life of LGBTQ+ individuals in the 80s-90s in Chicago, Illinois. This is the most specific collection of films pertaining to the midwest within QFAST. Each episode depicts different issues faced by the community, interviews with notable figures from the community, and activities and events of the community. The collection is historically significant for the Queer community in the Midwest, but it is not up to date. As the collection site is hosted by Gerber/Hart, it is accessible for free to any person with internet access. The episodes are linked to the site from YouTube with a small synopsis of what each episode contains. The purpose of this resource within the collection is for users to be able to reflect on the community’s history, and how the fine arts so often interwoven with that history.

An Intersectional Lens: Towards a Queer and Trans People of Color (QTPOC) Film Canon

https://qtpocfilmcanon.squarespace.com/

The QTPOC Film Canon is a curated list of films created by or about Queer and Trans People of Color. Started in 2018, and updated with new films for consideration as additional films that fit the criteria came out, this collection focuses on films that specifically take place in America. This collection also focuses on People of Color within the community, an intersection of identity that is often overlooked by mainstream film and media. Each entry in the list is accompanied by the title, director, year, runtime, image, and synopsis of the film. The synopses also include small reviews about the importance of each title in context of the Canon. The Canon is browseable through clearly labelled tabs. This resource is important in representing demographics in the community that are the most difficult to find representation for in film.

50 Best Queer Cinema Lists (Updated)

from Timeout Media

https://www.timeout.com/film/the-50-best-gay-movies-the-best-in-lgbt-film-making

This list is a collection of 60 of the best Queer films of all time written by a group of eight individuals. Many “best of” film lists online are usually pulled together by a single person and reflect a single opinion, so having a list curated by a larger group focuses more on the objective merit of each film rather than the personal opinion of a single person. Each entry on the list has the title, director, year, medium, cast, image, synopsis, review, and whether the film is recommended or not. Each entry, links to a more indepth review about each film that also has a trailer linked, if applicable. This establishes some queer films that are important to film history and queer representation in film within QFAST.

Gay Celluloid Film Collection & Reviews

https://www.gaycelluloid.com/index.html

Gay Celluloid is a collection of over 1000 reviews of gay cinema from around the world. It is continually updated with reviews of known and unknown films alike. Each entry has the title, director, year, runtime, country, an in depth review, and a link to a trailer, if applicable. It also has categories of Gay visibility, nudity, and the overall rating of the film. This collection does have a search function in order to look through all of the reviews. While the collection covers US centric and made films, it also expands the focus worldwide allowing a glimpse into queer communities, specifically the gay community, all around the globe. This collection brings a world perspective for the resource that opens many demographics that are existing and new for the Midwest region.

Deerfield Public Library's Queer Poem-a-Day Ongoing Series

https://www.deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/

Since 2021 Deerfield Public Library in Illinois has curated a yearly June collection of poems written and read aloud in audio clips by contemporary and local poets from the LGBTQIA+ community. This series provides the works alongside poet profiles, and links to the books and anthologies from said authors in their catalog and for purchase, enabling easy access to catalog records and selection evaluation. This collection is maintained through the present, 2025, with prior years works archived on multiple podcast resources such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Youtube, allowing libraries to explore poetry in non-traditional audio collections. “Queer Poem-a-Day” showcases diverse queer poets' lived experiences through multiple lenses, topics, and in their own voices, providing a framework for any library to be able to extend their collection to engage the community in poetry. This collection is ad-free and sponsored by the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.

Trans/Space Poetry Project

https://www.tucsontnbqpoetry.com/

Many libraries, poetry resources, and the like reference the Trans/Space project in collections of poetry resources for, from and about queer and trans experiences. Envisioned in 2004 and published in 2019, the site includes robust gender diverse specific poetry anthologies, poets, and linked resources as well as a parallel compilation centering queer poetry, works, and references more generally. The Trans/Space project lacks search, but is simple enough and encompassing enough to be easily used to compile potential poetry collection additions. It is only semi-regularly maintained, but still ad-free, open access, and many of the poets and resources listed have updated works. The site also includes links purchased from local bookstores and independent publications centering trans and queer voices, not available in standard publishing selection tools, that can help expand the voices included in a library’s poetry collection.

The Poetry Archive's "Speak It's Name" Oral Poetry Collection

https://poetryarchive.org/collections/speak-its-name/

Speak Its Name is a point-in-time product published in 2022 by the Poetry Archive, itself founded in 1999, of 100 curated poems involving queer themes, subtext, or authorship with a “transhistorical and archival lens” (Poetry Archive, 2022). The resource is unique, mixing poems written by contemporary queer and trans artists as well as historically significant poetry read interpretively by modern poets. While only 100 poems, its accessible multimedia, text and audio clips, formats offer multiple avenues to consider when incorporating non-monograph poetry into a temporary or permanent library collection. “Speak its Name” helps identify interpretive historical queer poetry and poets for a library’s collection that may be resilient to censorship, while also highlighting the diversity of thought and themes critically throughout time. The ad-free site also offers intuitive tagging, “related works” pages to help selectors and patrons identify similar poets and collections, and citations for the original source material for purchase.

The Queer Zine Archive Project

https://archive.qzap.org/index.php/Splash/Index#

The Queer Zine Archive Project or QZAP is a digital archive dedicated to the preservation of queer zines and related materials. In addition to QZAP’s physical collection housed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the QZAP digital collection includes over 500 queer zines, audio zines, flyers, and other ephemera and other materials dating back to the 1980s. The QZAP is cataloged with xZINECOREx standards, making zines in this archive easily discoverable based on specific tags, such as themes, identities, and geographies, all of which are highly relevant to zines as a medium. QZAP also maintains a blog highlighting different materials in their collection as they relate to current events, providing even more options for discovery. QZAP is a crucial resource for researchers, activists, educators, and anyone interested in queer DIY culture and underground queer history.

Papercut Zine Library

https://www.librarything.com/catalog/pzl

The Papercut Zine Library (PZL) is a volunteer-run lending library based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a free digital archive of over 1000 zines. Many, but not all, zines in the archive have LGBTQ+-related tags. PZL highlights independent publishing and DIY culture by preserving zines about queerness, politics, feminism, harm reduction, education, and more. Discoverability is a key feature of the PZL, as the catalog is searchable by subject, title, author, and other tags, making queer and LGBTQ+ materials easy to identify. The PZL free digital archive serves as a valuable tool for anyone wanting to discover zines that represent queer voices, and find resources at the intersection of identities and subjects.

Queer Archive Work

https://queer.archive.work/library/download/index.html

Queer Archive Work (QAW), stylized as “queer.archive.work,” is a platform aiming to preserve and promote queer and experimental publishing. In addition to a publishing studio and residency program in Providence, Rhode Island, QAW hosts a digital archive. The QAW free download library hosts 39 highly curated, significant, and rare queer texts, many of which are zines and related ephemera, dating back to the 1960s. The highly-curated nature of this archive highlights the significance of each material archived. QAW emphasizes artist-driven publication. In support of its core values, QAW’s mission is to promote queer liberation, trans visibility, and intersectional solidarity by maintaining free-to-use programming, providing a safe space for queer creators, and learning to better support underserved communities. QAW’s digital archive is growing, and it is a valuable tool for educators, students, queer historians and more.