Monday, December 15, 2008

My "Papers" Are at NYU

It's kind of funny, but all of these things that were just crowding my apartment and storage space -- stacks and stacks of papers, magazines, tapes, discs and assorted other stuff -- are now collected in The Michelangelo Signorile Papers at New York University's Fale's Library and Special Collections. And boy am I glad to have it all out of my space and ensconced in queer history in one fell swoop!

Actually, this is only from 1985 to 2000, as the guide explains. It took several years for the archivists to sift through the stuff and catalogue it all -- after it sat around for a while in boxes in the library, which happens at university libraries -- and then it took another couple of years for the guide to be catalogued online in this finding aid. It's been online since earlier in the year, I just hadn't had a chance to post it here.

As the years go on, I will add to it, perhaps at ten or 15 year increments, so I guess I'm good for a document dump soon!

Some of the tapes and documents actually cannot be viewed uncensored until particular dates. Others can be viewed but not copied or quoted from. All of this is about certain legal requirements, regarding sources or subjects who may still be alive.

Anyway, I thought you'd get a kick out of it, particularly a few of the itemized things like:

Audio microcassette: Queer in America, interview with Paul Barressi, porn star on John Travolta, Memorex MC-60

Audio microcassettes (2): Queer in America, interview with David Burns, hustler, on Geffen & Diller, Sony MC-60 undated

Isn't it cool to know that 100 years from now a college student will be doing his paper on homosexuality in the latter 20th century, listening to those tape recordings in the library?