Let's start by asking what can GLAPN do for you?

GLAPN is a small and cash-strapped organization. Nonetheless, we have the respect of the communities we serve, and members of GLAPN have standing in their own professional areas. We do our best to offer our support and credibility to the people who help us.

We can, at very least, offer Letters of Recommendation to individuals who complete projects for us.

We have successfully supervised interns for academic credit.

We are willing to discuss collaboration on projects, as they fit our mission and can be accomplished within our time and budget constraints.

We are, frankly, interested in creative ways to leverage other people's energy to expand the awareness of LGBTQ history in the Pacific Northwest. We invite people to tell us what they need from us, in order to make that happen.

Wanted: Volunteer with Museum or Library Background!

AS OF WINTER, 2012, a specific need has been identified at Oregon Historical Society for the processing of materials in the LGBTQ archive.

In both cases, we need someone with a museum or library background, or serious interest in those areas, who can work without much supervision.

#1: The Lesbian Community Project collection arrived via GLAPN in bits and pieces. OHS needs someone to organize and reconcile the entire collection. This will require a commitment of about 50 hours, spent in the OHS Library.

#2: Assessing the LGBTQ Periodical Collection. OHS needs someone to look at their total collection of LGBTQ periodicals, and make note of omissions or gaps so that OHS can attempt to fill them. OHS estimates a time commitment in the neighborhood of 10 hours (in the OHS Library) for this task.

Please respond to volunteer@glapn.org if you have the time and the background to meet one of these immediate needs, and we'll put you in touch with the right people at Oregon Historical Society.

ONGOING VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES

File conversion, transcription, word-processing
In early 2011, GLAPN established the goal of getting all or part of its Oral History Collection online. That means that in addition to paper transcripts on file at Oregon Historical Society, we would like to have searchable electronic files online, and, when possible, original recordings and perhaps even videos of the interviews. Over the years, material has come to us in a variety of forms, and we need help bringing it to contemporary standards.

Are you able to convert cassette tapes, mini-DVs, .DSS, .WAV, and other audio formats to MP3s?
Do you have OCR software that could acquire digital text from a typewritten or printed original?
Can you transcribe an interview from audio into a word-processed file?
Are you willing to work at home on these relatively tedious tasks?

If so, we would like to hear from you at volunteer@glapn.org.

Video post-production
At the moment we have a backlog of video projects which need professional-level editing and post-production work. Some of the projects, if we could finish them, have potential as fundraising tools for us, and all of them will be of interest to students of LGBTQ history. All of them require a substantial commitment of time, and volunteers would need to work in their own space and with their own equipment.

Do you have information to share, or materials to donate?

You make history every day.

It’s probably not first on the list of things you’re concerned about. Self-censorship in your daily life might lead you to devalue your experience as a member of a minority group. Plus you may not like to think of yourself as a historic artifact.

Still, if you have lived as an LGBTQ person — or an LGBTQ-friendly person — long enough to be reading this, you probably have some stories to tell. And, trust us, somebody would benefit by hearing them.

If you have scrapbooks, pictures, documents or reminiscences about LGBTQ life in the Pacific Northwest anytime in the last hundred years or so, GLAPN would like to hear from you. Perhaps you’d like to share your archives – or give them to us outright! Perhaps you could volunteer to be the subject of an oral history interview. We can talk about it.

GLAPN will benefit by growing a bigger, more comprehensive archive. You’ll feel good about doing something to combat the isolation and self-deprecation that all-too-frequently are part of LGBTQ life. Somebody out there will be glad to know they are part of a continuum, a community with a history, and they really weren’t the only one. Everybody is going to win.

Send us an email now, while you’re thinking about it!

GLAPN's wish list

It probably goes without saying, but gifts of cash are always welcome, and because we are a (501) (c) (3) organization, they are tax-deductible.

We have an ongoing need for archival-quality file folders and document sleeves to protect some of our acquisitions from environmental wear and tear.

We would love to have, or have access to, industrial-strength scanning and Optical Character Recognition capability. We have material that could be posted online fairly easily if we could get beyond the one-page-at-a-time OCR applications that come with the average desktop scanner.

We have a half-dozen large projects that need Video Post-Production work. We haven't had much difficulty acquiring video records of several of our 2-hour programs, but internally we lack the equipment and expertise to turn them into finished videos.

We would be delighted to have dedicated, long-term storage available to us. People frequently offer us materials that they no longer have space for, and we have the same problem: between the time we are offered materials, and the time we are able to process collections for Oregon Historical Society (or distribute them to other interested organizations), we need a clean, dry, secure, and accessible place to put them. Members' attics, basements, spare rooms and garages have been exploited, but they are not ultimate solutions.

If you can help, send us an email now, while you’re thinking about it!

GLAPN depends on donations. A click on the button below will take you to PayPal, where you may securely make a donation using your credit card.