Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies

The Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies is a collection of GLBT historical materials housed in the Special Collections and Rare Books section of the University of Minnesota Libraries, located underground in the Elmer L. Andersen [http://andersen.lib.umn.edu/andersenlibimages.html library cavern] . The Tretter Collection houses over 40,000 items, making it one of the largest GLBT history collections in the United States. The collection is international in scope and a varied in media. It covers all time periods, from a 4,000-year-old phallic statuette from Egypt to current editions of GLBT periodicals.

Although books are the core of the collection (including a large holding of gay pulp fiction), substantial sections include textiles, glassware, film, music, art works, and three-dimensional objects such as statuary, event buttons, and furniture. The collection includes unpublished manuscripts, vertical files, and periodicals in approximately 56 languages. Much of the material is from people and organizations in the United States during the last third of the twentieth century.

Among the significant archival holdings are:
* items from the Magnus Hirschfeld estate
* archives of the national Log Cabin Republicans
* records of the Daughters of Bilitis
* Mattachine Society records
* page proofs and layouts for six works by Andy Warhol
* archives of the Lesbian Review of Books
* archives of the National Education Association GLBT Caucus
* the Jim Chalgren Collection
* the personal papers of:
** Tobias Schneebaum
** Dallas S. Drake
** Stuart Ferguson
** Professor Toni McNaron
** Patrick Scully

The collection was started by Jean-Nickolaus Tretter, a Minnesota-born archivist in the late 1970s, and later donated to the University of Minnesota Libraries.

Selected items from the collection and timelines are frequently assembled and displayed worldwide. Recent displays have been at the Motor City Pride in Michigan in 2007, and the first Moscow, Russia Pride Festival in May, 2006.

In 2005 the collection started its official newsletter, "The Tretter Letter." [http://special.lib.umn.edu/rare/tretter/tretterletterjan07.pdf]

References

External links

* [http://www.trettercollection.org/ Tretter Collection blog]
* [http://special.lib.umn.edu/rare/tretter.phtml University Tretter Collection website]
* [http://andersen.lib.umn.edu/ Andersen Library Website]