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Cathleen Miller, M.A., M.L.S., curator of ɫ����Ƶ’s Maine Women Writers Collection, will participate in a roundtable titled “Legacy, Trust, and Legitimacy: Challenges in Developing and Promoting LGBTQ Collections in Small Repositories” at the LGBTQ+ Archives, Libraries, Museums and Special Collections (ALMS) Conference in London on June 24, 2016.

Miller’s remarks will center on the culture of privacy in New England and how it impacts both collecting and promoting materials that document love between women. She will also discuss the challenges that face the Maine Women Writers Collection. “Individuals may have self-censored, making this historical evidence more difficult to uncover,” she explained. “What is saved is often what a family decides to keep, so many records simply do not exist. Telling the stories of women’s lives is inherently more difficult because fewer records were saved, but promoting these collections is what makes archival work rewarding.”

ALMS is an international conference focused on the work by public, private, academic, and grassroots organizations that collect, capture and preserve archives of LGBTQ+ experiences in order to ensure that LGBTQ+ histories continue to be documented and shared. The conference began in Minnesota in 2006 when the Tretter Collection and Quatrefoil Library co-hosted the first LGBT ALMS Conference. The last conference took place in 2012 in Amsterdam, where archivists, activists, librarians, museums professionals and academics from around the world came together to share success stories and discuss challenges involved in recording LGBTQ+ lives.

To apply, visit www.une.edu/admissions