About the Collections

Traditionally, archives are places where historical documents are organized and preserved. Community archives (like Queer History Boston) exist to preserve the stories of people traditionally left out of mainstream institutions. By saving and sharing their own records, marginalized communities can tell their own stories. 

QHB holds thousands of photographs, documents, oral histories, artifacts, and A/V materials donated by local groups, activists, artists, and more spanning from the 1930s through today!

A collection is a group of materials organized around a certain subject, topic, organization, or donor. QHB has created collection guides, also known as finding aids, to help you understand the types of materials each collection contains.

Queer History Boston’s collection guides, also known as finding aids, are documents explaining the content of each collection. Because many of our collections aren’t digitized, collection guides let our visitors know what’s available to view on site. 

Collection guides contain information about the collection itself, as well as information about related materials in other collections. This information can help you to find specific events, people, or places you may be looking for.

Queer History Boston is a large archive, with over 150 collections. Digitization is a long process, and involves volunteers scanning each individual item and uploading it to our digital collections page. 

While everything we have can’t be digitized, we have created collection guides/finding aids to help you better understand what may be housed in a collection. When you’ve found a collection you’re interested in viewing, you can schedule an appointment here to view them in-person. Our digitized collections can be found here.