All Guides: Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Guide: Getting Started

Local Resources and Organizations

A handful of links to local resources and organizations here in the Twin Cities to help kick-start your research process.

Quatrefoil Library
A special, independent not-for-profit library focused on collecting materials related to LGTBQ interests and concerns. Their mission is to collect, maintain, document and circulate gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer materials and information in a safe and accessible space.
Eastside Freedom Library
The ESFL’s mission is to inspire solidarity, advocate for justice and work toward equity for all. The library houses non-circulating research collections that appeal to interested general learners as well as scholars, with innovative databases and finding aids that make using the collections fun and vital.
The Advocates for Human Rights
The mission of The Advocates for Human Rights is to implement international human rights standards to promote civil society and reinforce the rule of law.
Planned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood is one of the nation’s leading providers of high-quality, affordable health care, and the nation’s largest provider of sex education.
Office on the Economic Status of Women
The Office on the Economic Status of Women (OESW) advises the legislature and provides information and statistics on women in Minnesota. The office gathers information on population characteristics, educational attainment and enrollments, marital and parental status, household characteristics, labor force status and employment characteristics, and basic information on women's legal and economic rights.
Women’s Initiative for Self Empowerment, Inc.
The mission of WISE is to empower immigrant women and girls to succeed. WISE envisions a future where immigrant women and girls will be honored for their wisdom, celebrated for their leadership, and empowered to create change in their lives and their communities.
MN Transgender Health Coalition
The Minnesota Transgender Health Coalition is committed to improving health care access and the quality of health care received by trans and gender nonconforming people through education, resources, and advocacy.
Tubman
Safety. Hope. Healing. Those three words are at the heart of Tubman’s mission. For more than 40 years, we’ve worked to advance opportunities for change so that every person can experience safety, hope, and healing.

Best Bets

Key resources for beginning research in this field:

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Archival Resources

Digital Transgender Archive
The purpose of the Digital Transgender Archive (DTA) is to increase the accessibility of transgender history by providing an online hub for digitized historical materials, born-digital materials, and information on archival holdings throughout the world. The collection focuses on materials created prior to 2000.
Bay Area Reporter Archives
"The Bay Area Reporter is the oldest continuously published lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer weekly newspaper in the United States and is the highest circulation publication serving the LGBTQ communities of the San Francisco Bay Area." The GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco is digitizing issues starting in at the inception of publication in 1971 through mid-2005, thanks to a grant from the Bob Ross Foundation. 2005 issues to present is available on the Bay Area Reporter's website at www.ebar.com.
Women: Transnational Networks
Women: Transnational Networks focuses on issues at the intersection of gender and class from the late-eighteenth century to the era of suffrage in the early-twentieth century, all through a transnational perspective. The collection contains deep information on European and North American movements, but also expands its scope to include collections from other regions.

Women and Social Movements
A resource for scholars of U.S. Women's history. The collection currently includes 123 document projects and archives with 5,100 documents and more than 170,000 pages of additional full-text documents, written by 2,700 primary authors. It also includes book, film, and website reviews, notes from the archives, and teaching tools.

The Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection Archives
"The Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies houses over 3,000 linear feet of material about the GLBT experience. It includes published material, organizational records, personal manuscripts, informational files, films, music, textiles, posters, and other items. The collection is international in scope and has materials in approximately 58 languages." -Web site