Transcripts

SPEAKER 1: Tonight, a new exhibition is opening at the Hennepin History Museum in Minneapolis on the Quatrefoil Library. Quatrefoil is one of just a few LGBT-lending libraries in the nation. Over the past 30 years, it's grown into a research center and community space. Marianne Combs has this report.

MARIANNE COMBS: Rainbow flags hang prominently in the windows of the Quatrefoil Library on Lake Street in Minneapolis. Housed on the ground floor of a residential building, the library is open on weekends and weeknights and run entirely by volunteers. Kathy Robbins has been the head librarian for 15 years.

KATHY ROBBINS: I became a librarian in real life. And I'm a lesbian, and so it seemed like a perfect fit.

MARIANNE COMBS: The library was born out of the private collection of Dick Hewetson and David Irwin, a gay couple who were also bibliophiles. Robbins says, Irwin, in particular, was a collector with an affection for gay fiction.

KATHY ROBBINS: And they lived over in a condo on Grand Avenue in Saint Paul, and they began to run out of room.

MARIANNE COMBS: This was in the early 1980s when finding gay literature was still very difficult, and checking out a gay novel at a public library was a courageous act. Friends encouraged Hewetson and Irwin to make their collection more widely available. They moved the books into a room of the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union building in Saint Paul. They named it the Quatrefoil Library after one of the first novels to positively depict a gay romance.

Word spread fast, and people began patronizing the small library and donating their own collections. Over the years, Quatrefoil has moved twice to accommodate its continued growth. Robbins says the library now boasts more than 20,000 books and 5,000 DVDS, as well as numerous magazines and newspapers.

KATHY ROBBINS: Everything in this library is GLBT related, either the authors are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or the topic of the book, either the plot of the fiction or the topic of the non-fiction.

MARIANNE COMBS: Many of the author names are familiar-- Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, Federico Garcia Lorca. There are biographies of Bob Mould and Boy George. One book cover asks, "Are there closets in heaven?" Anyone can stop by the library to peruse its collection.

But to check out material, you need to be a dues-paying member. There are currently 325 active members. Robins says, over the years, the library has become an increasingly important resource for students.

KATHY ROBBINS: Everywhere from-- we've had junior high history day students, through high school, colleges. Many, many college students come in and use our resources and some grad students as well.

MARIANNE COMBS: L. Warnest came to Quatrefoil when she was a senior in high school working on a history paper about Stonewall.

L. WARNEST: So when I first came here with my mom, I'm pretty sure I wasn't technically out of the closet yet. She seemed fine with this space, maybe a little bit off put by the GME section, the gay male erotica stuff.

MARIANNE COMBS: Quatrefoil is also establishing itself as a community center.

SPEAKER 2: So the 16 tentacles hit you for 8-points damage.

MARIANNE COMBS: On a recent Sunday afternoon, the library was buzzing with a volunteer ice cream social in the community room and around of Dungeons and Dragons underway at a table in the back.

SPEAKER 2: Roll to see if you are paralyzed. Well, you already are, so don't worry about it.

MARIANNE COMBS: Greg Toltzman has been a member for 18 years, he says, in large part because of the library's archive.

GREG TOLTZMAN: For research and for just our historical understanding of who we are and who we've been and what our relationship is, and politics in the city and stuff is really important.

MARIANNE COMBS: Toltzman says, he's particularly proud of the research Quatrefoil volunteers did to help compile numbers for gay homicides before police departments began tracking such things. But he also enjoys coming to just hang out and play D&D with friends who don't care if he's flirting with the Princess or the Prince. Despite the strides the LGBT community has made over the years, head librarian Kathy Robbins says there are still Quatrefoil members who insist on picking up their new library cards in person.

KATHY ROBBINS: Because they are not out to their spouse or their family or their children or whoever and they don't want us to mail anything that says Quatrefoil library on the envelope.

MARIANNE COMBS: Just as the LGBT community continues to come out, so does the library. In the past, it has participated in the Twin Cities Pride Festival. This year, Quatrefoil will be at Pride festivals around the state. Covering the arts, I'm Marianne Combs, Minnesota Public Radio News.