Scholarship, pulp and nudes in new Hay LGBT collection
Ben Schreckinger
Issue date: 12/5/08
http://media.www.browndailyherald.com/media/storage/paper472/news/2008/12/05/Features/Scholarship.Pulp.And.Nudes.In.New.Hay.Lgbt.Collection-3572142.shtmlKnown for its eclectic assortment of holdings - including a 500-volume collection on the history of recreational fireworks and 80 volumes recovered from Adolf Hitler's personal library - the Hay will add more than 4,000 volumes to its gay and lesbian catalog to form the Ronald Smith Collection, named after the donor. The collection includes more than 1,300 scholarly works, 2,000 works of fiction and 40 volumes of male nudes.
Why did Smith choose Brown as the recipient of his collection? "They were willing to take it," he said. Smith said he worried that the Northeast did not have a collection of this sort and "spent several years trying to find a school or a public library ... that would provide a home for it."
Smith contacted the public library in Provincetown, Mass., but he was told the library was not equipped to acquire the collection. Fortunately, Provincetown's librarian was in touch with an informal network of people interested in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) materials and was able to direct Smith to the Hay.
