About the Williams Institute and the Williams Reading Room:
The Williams Institute Reading Room and Collection is a program of the Charles R. Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law. The Williams Institute is a national think tank dedicated to the field of sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy. It advances law and public policy through rigorous, independent research and scholarship.
The Williams Institute Reading Room houses the law library's collection of materials acquired to support research in sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy. Located in the UCLA School of Law's Hugh and Hazel Darling Law Library, the Reading Room contains an international, research-level collection of works in all types of media. As of September 2020, over 3,000 books, periodicals and videorecordings are included in the Williams Collection.
Located on the third floor of the UCLA School of Law library, the Reading Room and Collection are open during regular library hours. *Please refer to the Law library's Limited Access Policy for details. The Reading Room and collection were made possible through the generous donation of over $1 million by philanthropist, educator, and businessman Charles R. Williams, an anonymous donor, and subsequent donors and friends.
About this Guide:
**IMPORTANT NOTE: For pages with sub-tabs, please be sure to click on the top-level tab for general information on that topic.
Most of the books included in the guide are housed in the Williams Reading Room. However, some are held by other libraries on the UCLA campus, such as the Young Research Library (the graduate studies library) and College Library (the undergraduate library.) "SRLF" is the Southern Regional Library Facility, a storage facility on the UCLA campus. For more information, see the UCLA Libraries website, or the listing of different library locations.
This guide contains print books, electronic books, other electronic resources, videorecordings, and journals; it does not provide references to journal articles.
If you are searching for a particular item that is not included in this guide, try searching the UCLA Library Catalog.
For the most comprehensive guide to LGBT archives, please see the "Lavender Legacies Guide: Lesbian and Gay Archives Roundtable Guide to Sources in North America." The Lesbian and Gay Archives Roundtable (LAGAR) is a section of the Society of American Archivists (SAA). On the Lavender Legacies site, you can browse by province (Canada) or State (U.S.) There is also an alphabetical index by repository name.
See below for a listing of LGBT archives in Southern California and nationally.