Aggies Embrace LGBT Culture

[TexasTowelie]

The gay bookworm: before Houstonian Don Kelly sold his collection of queer published material to Texas A&M University, he was storing more than 8,000 titles in his studio apartment.

Texas A&M University acquires the Don Kelly Research Collection of Gay Literature and Culture

It’s quite rare to meet someone who you can instantly tell is genuine down to their core. But when I met Houstonian Don Kelly, I instantly knew he is one of the few. In early February, I sat and chatted with Kelly in his humble studio apartment—the walls filled with colorful drawings, paintings, and other memorabilia. But if I had been sitting in the same spot only months earlier, I wouldn’t have just been surrounded by art, but by more than 8,000 queer books, magazines, newspapers, comics, and more. At 74 years old, Kelly touts one of the most impressive collections of LGBTQ books and published materials in the nation—a collection that was recently acquired by Texas A&M University’s Cushing Memorial Library and Archives.

A retired civil servant of 36 years and an openly gay man all of his life, Kelly has always been a lover of books. He was initially inspired to start his collection after discovering author Anthony Slide’s book The Lost Gay Novels, which discussed 50 novels from the early 20th century that told stories with gay themes and characters. “I thought by collecting the listed titles, I would have a fun and interesting project which would allow me to reflect on the gay condition, and maybe tell me something about myself,” Kelly says. Over the next year, he collected first editions of 48 of the 50 books listed.

One thing led to another, and soon Kelly was collecting everything from campy pulp fiction to AIDS literature to some of the first gay periodicals. In reference to the latter, Kelly laughs and adds, “They’re so sleazy.” What started out as a strictly gay male collection has since expanded to include lesbian, bisexual, and transgender literature as well. When asked how he finds and purchases each new acquisition for his collection, Kelly laughs again and says, “I had to learn to use eBay. I’m a technological dinosaur.”

I tend to disagree, however, when I see the digitized version of Kelly’s collection (which totaled 8,070 titles at press time) that he has meticulously organized and put online using the website LibraryThing. Kelly has scanned the cover of each and every item in his collection, labeled each published work with tags to better categorize them, and added notes next to each title that has a special feature such as an inscription by the author. “If I didn’t have LibraryThing, I wouldn’t have even attempted this collection,” he says. The database reveals that Kelly’s collection boasts 1,843 titles that are signed and 213 that feature an inscription by a gay man to another gay man, known as “gay associations.” He notes that he’s been complimented on his virtual collection by numerous collectors worldwide.

Read more: http://www.outsmartmagazine.com/2015/03/aggies-embrace-lgbt-culture/

[font color=maroon]Former governor Rick Perry thinks that this news is fab-u-lous![/font]

[shenmue]

1. Eight thousand books?

The man is a saint!

[Ilsa]

2. The George R R Martin stuff and now this!

TAMU might turn into a very interesting place in spite of the GHWBush library.