Digitizing Lesbian Oral Histories From the Central Valley
By Isaac Fellman
Audiotapes in the Linda Garber Oral History Collection; photograph by Isaac Fellman.
We are very excited to announce a new program to digitize a set of lesbian oral histories documenting life in California’s Central Valley. The program is made possible through the California Revealed Project, an initiative run by the California State Library that helps heritage organizations digitize, preserve and provide online access to materials documenting the state’s history, art and cultures.
For this year, the GLBT Historical Society has been awarded a grant to digitize five oral history audio recordings on seven audiotapes from the Linda Garber Oral History Collection. This archival collection contains the recordings of the Central California Lesbian Oral History Project, with which Garber was involved. The interviews are notable for focusing on the experience of lesbians in the 1970s in California’s rural Central Valley, rather than those living in major metropolitan areas, with an emphasis on the lesbian and feminist movements of the era. Among the women interviewed are Lillian Faderman, Phyllis Irwin, Barbara Sullivan and Bobra Tahan.
We prioritized this collection for digitization because of its unique historical value and the increasing fragility of the audiocassette tapes, which are at high risk for degradation and loss due to the aging of the magnetic media. When complete, the oral histories will be available through our website and will complement the existing Oral History Collection, which features over 400 interviews.
The society has participated in the California Revealed initiative several times, most recently in 2019–2020 when we submitted over 100 items from the José Sarria Papers, with an emphasis on programs and other materials from Sarria’s work with the Imperial Court System. The COVID pandemic has delayed completion of the Sarria scans, but they should be finished in 2023—just over one hundred years after Sarria’s birth.
Isaac Fellman has worked in archives at the California Historical Society, the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Oregon Health and Science University. He earned his MLS from Emporia State University and his M.A. in English from the University of Oregon. Isaac is also a Lambda Literary Award-winning writer.