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In 2025, Gerber/Hart Library and Archives officially dedicated its newest space: The Raffety/Tran Community Room, a multi-purpose gathering place to help meet the needs of the LGBTQ+ communities it serves. The Community Room has been designed to accommodate meetings, classes, receptions and small events, and film screenings. With funding from the RAILS My Library Is… grant, we were able to purchase technology and equipment necessary to fulfill the potential of this important new community resource for our current patrons and expand access for new patrons to discover Gerber/Hart’s holdings, history, and relevance.
Gerber/Hart is home to thousands of media titles, both in our circulating library and non-circulating special collections, on formats including 8-millimeter, Betamax, VHS, and DVD. Currently, patrons and researchers who would like to view a non-circulating title are limited in their viewing options to a small television on a rolling cart pushed into a quiet corner of the library. By outfitting the Community Room with more modern technology and equipment, as well as replacing some of our current technology in the library (such as the patron computer and Xerox machine) that has fallen into disrepair over time, these researchers and patrons enjoy more updated, productive, welcoming and accessible conditions than are currently available.
In addition to benefiting individual researchers and patrons, the technology for the Community Room allows Gerber/Hart to host community screenings of not only the materials preserved in our library and archives, but of film and media makers in the community at large.
The technology of the Community Room also serves the purposes of hybrid work/remote meetings, classes, presentations and the like. Gerber/Hart’s own staff, Board and volunteers benefit from the flexibility and accessibility offered through this type of use, and the communities we serve are welcome to take advantage of this resource.
The outcomes of this support include:
- Increased foot traffic and usage of Gerber/Hart for library access, archival research and community events, and awareness of our existence as a community resource
- A deeper and more meaningful relationship between Gerber/Hart and the communities it serves
- More personal engagement from community members’ personal and professional social media networks, with subsequent increased awareness of Geber/Hart as an institution and resource
- An increase in research, as technology makes it easier to navigate
- Opportunities for volunteers to share their work and gain professional presentation skills
- Community building and opportunities for marginalized, at-risk, and under-resourced groups and individuals
The Raffety/ Tran Community Room, and the technology provided by RAILS, holds exciting potential for the impact of Gerber/Hart as an institution and community resource. In a world increasingly fragmented by social media and plagued by an epidemic of loneliness, the prospect of gathering together to watch a film about your own lived experience in a community space of your own is life-affirming. In a society awash in misinformation easily disseminated with a click, a project carefully researched from archival primary source materials, and shared with fellow travelers in curiosity, is a balm.
Gerber/Hart remains a unique, open, and welcoming space for all, and we are grateful for the team at RAILS for helping us to expand our services and tell our story.
Today's blog post was written by Michael Rashid (he/him/his), Development Manager at the Gerber/Hart Library and Archives.
This project was made possible by the My Library Is... Grant.