UK Web Archive blog

Information from the team at the UK Web Archive, the Library's premier resource of archived UK websites

The UK Web Archive, the Library's premier resource of archived UK websites

6 posts categorized "LGBTQ+"

26 June 2023

LGBTQ+ Connections and Community

By Ash Green, CLIP LGBTQ+ Network, and Goldsmith University

The Marlborough Pub and Theatre
The Marlborough Pub and Theatre

I was browsing through the LGBTQ+ Lives Online collection recently, and reminded myself that I had added The Marlborough Pub and Theatre to it when I first began co-curating the collection. As far as I can remember, it was one of the first sites I added to the archive. I wanted it in there because it had been an important part of my coming out around 2017. I had a personal connection to it, and I wanted there to be a record of the impact it had on me. I know future explorers of the UK Web Archive won’t know why that site is archived, but maybe they will stumble across this blog post in connection to it and understand its importance to at least one BTQ person – me.

So, why did I specifically want this site in there? Well, in 2017, when I was working out what support there was for me as a trans/gender non-conforming person, I discovered The Clare project, which is a Tran’s support group in Brighton. I went along to it, and afterwards we went to The Marlborough Theatre and Pub, which was a venue with a long history of support for the LGBTQ+ community. The pub was the sort of place where I didn’t know anyone, but just being there made me feel okay about who I was. It was the first time being in an LGBTQ+ venue had felt like that to me. And I realised that there were other people there who seemed to be on similar paths in their lives. It was a reassuring place, and it was a place where I learnt about how diverse the LGBTQ+ community was. I remember going to a queer cabaret there, and it was such an amazing, heart-warming, queer, eye-opening and fun night. The pub is still there – now called The Actors. I’m not a regular visitor, and if you mention my name in there, they won’t know who I am. But when I call in from time to time when I’m in Brighton, I still get that sense of belonging to a community even if I’m quietly sitting in a corner reading on my own. It is a place that re-energises me.

It got me wondering about other sites in the LGBTQ+ Lives Online collection focused on artistic communities that may have had a similar impact on others in the same way that The Marly did on me.

So, for example, what joy did members of South Wales Gay Men's Chorus, Songbirds Choir, or True Colours LGBT Choir feel when they first sang with these choirs?

How excited were listeners when they heard a new track on LGBT Underground that stuck a strong emotional chord with them, and has stayed with them forever?

How did filmmakers feel when their first film appeared at the Scottish Queer International Film Festival, LezDiff, or the Iris Prize? And who in the audience saw something for the first time at these film festivals that resonated strongly with them?

And what sense of connection and belonging did those in queer / LGBTQ+ art groups such as The Queer Dot, Sanctuary Queer Arts, Wise Thoughts, and VFD find within their arts communities?

And maybe there are LGBTQ+ people who attended Queen Jesus, Teatro do Mundo, or even The Marlborough theatre performances, who realised the voice on stage was talking directly to them, and they clearly understood its message in relation to who they are as an LGBTQ+ person.

I’m know I can’t possibly be the only LGBTQ+ person who feels a strong connection with a place or community like these. Maybe you have a story to share about one of the sites in the collection? Or maybe you have a site like one of these that you would like us to add. You can nominate sites for inclusion here: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/nominate

We can’t curate the whole of the UK web on our own. We need your help to ensure that information, discussions, personal experiences and creative outputs related to the LGBTQ+ community are preserved for future generations. Anyone can suggest UK published websites to be included in the UK Web Archive by filling in the above nominations form.

If you would like to explore any of the sites mentioned in this blog post, you can find them in the Arts, Literature, Music & Culture subsection of the LGBTQ+ Lives Online collection: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/collection/3090

07 December 2022

Pride and Visibility in the LGBTQ+ Lives Online Collection

By Ash Green, CLIP LGBTQ+ Network, and Goldsmith University

The LGBTQ+ Lives Online UK Web Archive collection currently holds over 600 sites, web pages, blogs etc focused on the LGBTQ+ experience of people in the UK. Community and the coming together of individuals is a key aspect of the LGBTQ+ experience, and this is particularly reflected in sites acting as networks; focused on Pride events; and visibility and remembrance days such as Bi Visibility Day, Lesbian Visibility Week, Trans Day of Remembrance, International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia. These events, networks and days are there to support the community; remind others outside the community we are part of, that we exist; that we celebrate who we are; that the need to highlight and address inequalities continues to remain important despite LGBTQ+ people having existed for millennia.

Pride march with rainbow flags
Gotta Be Worth It from Pexels

An example of sites in the UK Web Archive under some of these banners include: LGBT Mummies (aiming to support LGBT+ women & people globally on the path to motherhood or parenthood); London Gaymers (a safe place for the LGBT gaming community in London and across the UK to connect with like minded individuals); African Rainbow Family (a non-for-profit charitable organisation that support lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender intersexual and queer (LGBTIQ) people of African heritage and the wider Black Asian Minority Ethnic groups); Pride Sports (a focus on increasing participation in sport by lesbians, gay men, bisexual and transgender people as well as the wider community). As you can see from the examples given, many of the informal networks are focused on where other aspects of an individual’s life overlaps with being an LGBTQ+ person.

We also have Pride sites archived within the collection, including both local (Pride In Surrey , Glasgow’s Mardi Gla , York Pride) and nationwide (LGBTQYMRU ) events. Before the pandemic they were mainly face-to-face events, but between 2020 and 2022, there was an increase in online events as many sought to keep LGBTQ+ people connected in a safe way.

We would like to build the collection of UK sites focused around Pride and awareness/visibility days. We don’t limit our collection of sites to big organisations only – as we have said before, all LGBTQ+ content is welcome, including personal content if it is published in the UK. And even though we would like to develop the areas of the collection highlighted above, we are also still happy to receive submissions around any aspects of LGBTQ+ Lives Online. So, if you know of any online content you think we should be archiving within this collection please nominate it here.

Under the Non-Print Legal Deposit Regulations 2013, the UKWA can archive UK published websites, but are only able to make the archived version available to people outside the Legal Deposit Libraries Reading Rooms, if the website owner has given permission. The UK Legal Deposit Libraries are the British Library, National Library of Scotland, National Library of Wales, Bodleian Libraries, Cambridge University Libraries and Trinity College Dublin Library. If you’re curious about what is in the LGBTQ+ collection you can browse through it here.

07 June 2021

Curating the UKWA LGBTQ+ Lives Online collection

By Ash Green and Steven Dryden - LGBTQ+ Lives Online lead curators

The LGBTQ+ Lives Online collection has been live now for almost a year. This has given us the time to gain a better understanding of the content in it, and also how people are interacting with the collection. Based on this, we wanted to consider some of the challenges around structuring, tagging and representing sites within it.

Sub-Collections & Subject tagging

When the collection was set up, one of the tasks that needed to be undertaken was defining the structure of the sub-collections. At this stage they are organised as follows:

  • Activism/Pride
  • Arts, Literature, Music & Culture
  • Business/Commerce
  • Education
  • History
  • Medicine and Community
  • Policy and Legislative Change
  • Religion
  • Social Organisations
  • Sport

We defined the sub-collections based on what we thought would be added to the collection, without actually knowing what the majority of that content might be. As more sites have been added we can see that some sub-collections work well and others not so well. We are getting a sense of which sub-collections might need to be revisited.

One sub-collection that at this stage requires more consideration in terms of whether it should be changed or split, is Medicine & Community. When we set this up, it felt like a logical pairing – both aspects of the sub-collection are about well-being, with one indicating it’s about medical support, and the other about wellness achieved through peer support. But now, as we add more sites to this sub-collection, the terminology doesn’t feel quite right. This is especially true when sites focused more on well-being, emotional support and guidance, such as Spectra and Outline Surrey are included in the sub-collection. Possibly a more appropriate sub-collection name would be Health & Community, which would still allow the inclusion of medical and community wellness, but under a clearer umbrella.

No homophobia, no violence t-shirt

When the collection was set up, Retirement also featured as a sub-collection. We eventually removed this before go-live. Not because it wasn’t relevant, but because there was insufficient online content within the collection to justify including it at this stage. That said, that may change over time and an increase in sites focusing on both retirement and older LGBTQ+ people’s lives may result in us re-instating it or a similar sub-collection. Similarly, other themes might rise out of existing sites in the collection that would require new sub-collections to be added, or even new subjects to be included. Part of the key purpose of the collection is to not only archive appropriate web sites, but to also make them findable via the sub-collections.

As well as adding sites to sub-collections within the LGBTQ+ Lives Online collection, they can also be assigned to other collections and sub-collections. For example, Graces Cricket Club (a gay cricket club) appear in both the LGBTQ+ Lives Online / Sport sub-collection and the separate Sport: Football collection. In cases like this, there’s no question that it’s perfectly appropriate to include this site in both subject collections. However, in some instances, LGBTQ+ sites have also been previously included in inappropriate sub-collections. For example, one site in the collection had previously been assigned to Medicine and Health / Conditions & Diseases sub-collection before the LGBTQ+ Lives

Online project began. This incorrectly implied that being an LGBTQ+ person was either a “condition” or a “disease”. This has been corrected, but it highlights that we also need to be aware that choosing which collection or sub-collection we add a site to has implications about how a curator perceives that site, and the negative bias we may in turn present to collection users by including a site in an inappropriate sub-collection.

Content Warnings
Another area we are considering is content warnings. When we recently ran an online session about the collection, we were asked if any content warnings were included in the descriptions of sites tagged within the collection. Another person also expressed concern about the inclusion of sites within the LGBTQ+ Lives Online collection that were negative or hostile towards members of the LGBTQ+ community. Though these sites are included, they do not provide content warnings about their harmful and negative perspectives or context about their inclusion. Again, this is a valid comment, and content warnings would help identify that users were about to enter a site whose perspectives might be problematic or triggering.

Keyboard - caution

You may also be wondering why sites such as the ones that are negative or hostile towards members of the LGBTQ+ community are included in the collection? It goes back to the purpose of this project, which is to archive UK sites that reflect UK LGBTQ+ lives and experiences. This includes positive, neutral and negative sites if relevant. For example, we include at least one site in the collection that questions the validity of trans and gender non-conforming people as apart of the LGBTQ+ community. If we didn’t include this site, it would not give a balanced picture of trans people’s experience, as it would miss out on a key factor that has had a huge impact on many trans lives over the past few years. As such, even though we do not agree with questioning the validity of trans and gender non-

conforming people, those sites are valid to LGBTQ+ research and discussion. But it’s not just sites like these that we would consider including a content warning against. Any sites highlighting LGBTQ+ phobic or hate content may also be included.

Content warnings are not something we’ve considered before, and at present, the cataloguing rules for the UK Web Archive collection don’t have capacity for the inclusion of content warnings. However, following on from these conversations, it is something we need to address, along with highlighting that including content within the collection does not necessarily mean that the curators agree with the opinions in those sites.

The structure of the sub-collections and content warnings are areas that we want to address as soon as we can, and it is something we would like to discuss with the wider LGBTQ+ community. How we achieve that is yet to be decided, but we are always open to suggestions.

In the mean-time, don’t forget that you can explore the LGBTQ+ Lives Online UK Web Archive collection.

You can also nominate sites for inclusion in the collection.

 

25 November 2020

LGBTQ+ Lives Online Web Archive Collection

By Steven Dryden, British Library LGBTQ+ Staff Network & Ash Green CILIP LGBTQ+ Network

As you’ll have read on this blog, the collaboration with UK Web Archive (UKWA), British Library and CILIP LGBTQ+ Network to develop LGBTQ+ content within the UK Web Archive was launched during summer 2020.

Rainbow tapestry

LGBTQ+ content was already part of the UK Web Archive before the collaboration began, with many sites in other collections overlapping LGBTQ+ themes. For example, Black and Asian Britain (blackgayblog.com), Gender Equality (Beyond the Binary), Sport (Graces Cricket Club). And some sites cut across many collections, highlighting the intersectional nature of the UK Web Archive. For example, Gal-Dem features in the News Sites; Zines and Fanzines; Black and Asian Britain; Gender Equality; Women's Issues; Unfinished Business: The Fight for Women’s Rights collections, as well as LGBTQ+ Lives Online. LGBTQ+ Lives Online, much like the lived experience of the LGBTQ+ does not sit in isolation, disconnected from other aspects of UK offline and online life. LGBTQ+ people play a part in all aspects of the UK community, and are not solely defined by their gender or sexual orientation.

This UK Web Archive collection doesn’t stand in isolation either, it enriches the scope of work already begun at The British Library.LGBTQ Histories aims to explore the experiences and stories encountered in the collections, posing questions about the lived experience of LGBTQ+ people throughout history.The LGBTQ+ Lives Online collection of the UK Web Archive plays a part in CILIP LGBTQ+ Network’s ambition to raise the profile of LGBTQ+ people, support the development of LGBTQ+ information resources and the work of LGBTQ+ Library, information and knowledge workers.

LGBTQ+ Lives Online Collection

UKWA 'ACT' tool

The collection currently contains over 400 sites and web pages in the main collection, with more of these being added to sub-collections every week. Many of the sites were already in the UKWA before the collaboration began, but were not linked to sub-collections. We are still at the stage where we are developing the structure of sub-collections but our initial indexes cover:

Since the launch of this collaborative project, we have been focused on a number of areas to both develop the project and to preserve sites within the collection. This includes:

  • Identifying sites already in the UK Web Archive to be added to the LGBTQ+ Lives Online sub-collections.
  • Identifying new sites not already in the UKWA to be included in the collection.
  • Spreading the word about the project as widely as possible via blog posts and articles such as this; social media; emails targeting specific LGBTQ+, library, and broader diversity organisations and networks.

You can browse through the collection here, and nominate a UK published site or webpage with a focus on LGBTQ+ lives to be included in the collection via: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/info/nominate. We would especially like to see more nominations that reflect the multicultural nature of UK LGBTQ+ communities and the many diaspora communities based here, including UK sites written in languages other than English.

Though it can often be challenging for us to archive social media accounts, we are able to collect LGBTQ+ Twitter accounts. We have experimented with other methods of archiving social media but this is on a selective basis, but we would welcome nominations and projects that might address these challenges and how they might impact on archiving LGBTQ+ experience in the UK,

How can you access these archived websites?

UKWA search results page

Under the Non-Print Legal Deposit Regulations 2013, the UKWA  can archive UK published websites, but are only able to make the archived version available to people outside the Legal Deposit Libraries Reading Rooms, if the website owner has given permission. The UK Legal Deposit Libraries are the British Library, National Library of Scotland, National Library of Wales, Bodleian Libraries, Cambridge University Library and Trinity College Dublin Library.  

Some of the websites in UKWA have already had permission granted, these include Out Stories Bristol, Trans Ageing and Care, Bi Cymru/Wales and Queer Zine Library. As the content of UKWA has mixed access, the message ‘Viewable only on Library premises’ will appear under the title of the website if you need to visit a Legal Deposit Library to view content. If there is no message underneath then the archived version of the website should be available on your personal device.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the reading rooms were closed for a number of weeks but are starting to reopen. This blog post gives an overview of opening hours and how to book a visit at the six UK Legal Deposit Libraries:

https://blogs.bl.uk/webarchive/2020/09/ukwa-available-in-reading-rooms-again.html 

Previous blog posts about the project can be viewed via the following links.

LGBTQ+ Lives Online project introduction

LGBTQ+ Lives Online: Introducing the Lead Curators

 

03 November 2020

LGBTQ+ Lives Online: Introducing the Lead Curators

By Steven Dryden, British Library LGBTQ+ Staff Network & Ash Green CILIP LGBTQ+ Network

In July 2020 the British Library, the UK Web Archive and CILIP LGBTQ+ Network relaunched the LGBTQ+ Lives Online web archive collection. We have received many nominations for new sites to be collected by the UK Web Archive and work has begun to re-tag many of the websites that have been collected since the UK Web Archive began collecting the UK web in 2005.

To mark two months since the project began, LGBTQ+ Lives Online leads Steven Dryden, of the British Library, and Ash Green, of CILIP LGBTQ+ Network write about the relevance of the World Wide Web to them as members of the LGBTQ+ community, and some of their collection highlights:

 

Steven he/him/his

StevenDryden
Steven Dryden

I first encountered the internet in Las Vegas. It was the summer of 1998, I was 17 and my family had migrated from Newcastle Upon Tyne to the western world’s party play pit in the Nevada desert. My friend, Lilian, was talking to someone in New York City about the band Depeche Mode through America Online (AOL).

Chat rooms were online spaces that allowed groups of people to join anonymously and had the options to talk and interact within a group or in private. Chatrooms quickly became a pivotal part of my small cohort of friends and I, the odd balls who didn’t quite fit, as we were forming our identities in those formative late teen years, and trying to find our place in the world.

Later the same year on October 12, 1998 Matthew Shepard would die. A gay student at the University of Wyoming, Shepherd was beaten, tortured, and left to die near Laramie on the night of October 6, 1998. AOL chatrooms formed the major part of how I found out about Shepherd, worked through my feelings about his murder, and was the first news story that I followed online.

The protections and general understanding of who the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community are has undergone radical change in the 22 years since I first encountered the internet. I’m interested to see what survives online of the change in language relating to the community, and what evidence remains in the UK Web Archive of the online discussion. Some websites that interest me in these first months of the project include:

  • The Campaign for Homosexual Equality: an organisation which led the way to legal reform in the UK, following the passing of the Sexual Offences Act 1967, which partial decriminalised homosexuality in England and Wales.

https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/en/archive/20130505124828/http://www.c-h-e.org.uk/

  • Around the Toilet: a community engaged art project exploring the accessibility and culture of toilets for the LGBTQ+ community

https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/en/archive/20180606164959/https://aroundthetoilet.wordpress.com/

  • Asexual Visibility and Education Network: founded in 2001 with two distinct goals: creating public acceptance and discussion of asexuality and facilitating the growth of an asexual community

https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/en/archive/20150226230020/http://www.asexuality.org/home/

 

Ash (they/them)

Ash Green
Ash Green

When I was studying for my BA Information and Library Management degree in the early 1990s, the internet and World Wide Web weren’t as high profile as they are now. I loved tech back then, and was into programming and creating databases as part of the degree. But I didn’t really understand what the lecturers were talking about when they mentioned the internet. At the time I had no idea how important it would be to my coming out just over 20 years later, and what a positive impact it would have.

Thinking about the lead up to my coming out in 2017, without access to sites and forums related to trans/gender non-conforming lives in particular, I doubt I would have come out at all. But when I decided to look for guidance online, I found a huge amount of information that was overwhelming at first, but eventually this helped me understood where I fitted into the world. They included medical sites; statements from WHO and other health organisations highlighting that being trans wasn’t a mental health issue; personal blogs and forums, talking about experiences and a variety of perspectives on what it means to be trans; finding out about non-binary, genderfluid, and genderqueer people experiences (I had no idea what these words meant); LGBTQ+ events; makeup and style tips; sites for face-to-face support groups and meetups, and sites for exhibitions such as the Museum of Transology and the Transworkers photography exhibition, which helped me understand that being trans is much broader than mainstream media would have the world believe.

Many sites were useful, but at the same time I came across quite a few that were more "Yes, this miracle herbal treatment really does change your hormones", and "You're only valid if you fit into trans box X or Y" that put my critical, digital literacy and research experience into practice. I also found supportive friends and allies, and I was able to share useful sites and sources of information I’d discovered to give them a better understanding of my experience. It’s important that these sites should be a part of the UK Web Archive LGBTQ+ Lives Online collection. Not only because they have a relevance to the UK Web Archive in general, but from a personal perspective I feel that if they had such an impact on helping me find where I fit into the world, how many other people have they also had a similar positive impact upon?

The sites I’ve chosen below from the UK Web Archive have all had a personal impact upon myself.

  • Museum of Transology: The UK’s most significant collection of objects representing trans, non-binary and intersex people’s lives. 

https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/en/archive/20201003091027/https://www.museumoftransology.com/

  • OutStories Bristol: Collecting and preserving the social history and recollections of LGBT+ people living in or associated with Bristol, England.

https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/en/archive/10000101000000/https://outstoriesbristol.org.uk/

  • Outline Surrey: Outline provides support to people with their sexuality and gender identity, including but not limited to the lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and trans community of Surrey, primarily through a helpline, website and support groups.

https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/en/archive/20160107134238/http://www.outlinesurrey.org/

 

Get involved with preserving UK LGBTQ+ Lives Online with the UK Web Archive

We can’t curate the whole of the UK web on our own, we need your help to ensure that information, discussions, personal experiences and creative outputs related to the LGBTQ+ community are preserved for future generations. Anyone can suggest UK published websites to be included in the UK Web Archive by filling in our nominations form:

https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/nominate

 

31 July 2020

LGBTQ+ Lives Online

 
 A white banner with the LGBTQ+ flag colours painted on with the text - love is love
Photo by 42 North from Pexels

By Steven Dryden, British Library LGBTQ+ Staff Network & Ash Green CILIP LGBTQ+ Network

 

When the internet first rose to prominence in the late 1990s, one of the primary modes of communicating with others was through internet chat rooms and forums. Suddenly, isolated people all over the world with a personal computer and internet access could communicate with others ‘like them’.

By using the term ‘like them’ we acknowledge that there is some form of social oppression which makes a person, perhaps alone in a rural community, feel unable to be themselves - to know anything about themselves at all. It is perhaps partly for the need to feel more connected with other people ‘like them’ that LGBTQ+ people adapted to online community-building quickly. Now, as we have been living online for over 25 years, it seems pertinent to consider what traces of early digital lives survive, and how we can begin to make sense of it. What survives of digital campaigns to legalise the age of consent for all sexualities in the UK (2001), gain recognition and protections of members of the trans community (Gender Recognition Act 2004) or the battle for marriage equality in the UK (England and Wales, 2013, Scotland 2014, Northern Ireland 2019)? As well as historical content such as this, we must also ensure we are ready and able to curate current and future online discussions and websites surrounding LGBTQ+ lives as well.

Part of this process has already begun. Through the UK Web Archive, the British Library along with the other five UK Legal Deposit Libraries, has been able to run an annual domain crawl of the UK web since April 2013, after the implementation of Non-Print Legal Deposit Regulations. Prior to this websites were archived on a permissions basis since January 2005. Through the Shine interface you can search the JISC UK Web Domain Dataset (1996-2013), this holds all the .uk websites archived by the Internet Archive from 1996 to April 2013. As a next step, the British Library and Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) LGBTQ+ Network are pleased to work collaboratively and develop LGBTQ+ Lives Online. This project will tag and subject categorise relevant websites in the UK Web Archive, and expand the scope of websites we collect for future generations. We look forward to sharing with you over the coming months the work that is being undertaken and how you can contribute.

CILIP LGBTQ+ Network members are pleased to be working collaboratively with the British Library and the UK Web Archive on this project, and recognise the historical value and importance of developing the LGBTQ+ Lives Online web archive.

The aim of the UK Web Archive is to collect content published on the UK web that reflects all aspects of life in the UK. This includes important aspects of British culture and events that shape society. The LGBTQ+ Lives Online collection reflects the important role this community plays in British society. The UK Web Archive is delighted to collaborate with the British Library LGBTQ+ Staff Network and the CILIP LGBTQ+ Network to build on the existing LGBTQ+ collection. Although there is a dedicated collection about the LGBTQ+ community, many of the websites tagged in this collection also intersect with other collections in the archive such as our various sports collections, Political Action and Communication and Oral History in the UK.

 

Get Involved:

CILIP LGBTQ+ Network, the British Library and the UK Web Archive welcome nominations for UK websites which should be included in the LGBTQ+ Lives Online.

Nominations can be made via this form: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/nominate

 

Keep an eye on the CILIP LGBTQ+ Network Twitter as well as the UK Web Archive blog and Twitter account for more updates on the LGBTQ+ Lives Online collection.