YEAR: 2022

AFFILIATION: LGBT Center of Central PA History Project, with the Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections

The LGBT Center of Central PA History Project was created in August 2012 with the mission to engage people in discovering, documenting, collecting, preserving and presenting the history of the LGBTQ+ community in central PA through oral histories and material culture. The History Project works in partnership with the Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections which serves as the repository of the collection and provides professional archival care, digitization and preservation of the collection. The collection includes oral history interviews with more than 150 people and more than 120 linear feet of archival and artifact collections.

The History Project has created numerous temporary, traveling and digital exhibits, sponsored symposia, lectures and story circles, partnered with more than a dozen history, art and community organizations, and worked with more than 20 college and university interns and several classes. The History Project collaborated with author William Burton and Penn State University Press to publish the book Out in Central Pennsylvania: The History of an LGBTQ Community that won the Arline Custer Memorial Award in 2020 from the Mid Atlantic Regional Archives Conference. In 2014 the History Project won the J. Franklin Jameson Archival Advocacy Award from the Society of American Archivists.