LGBTQ+ Social Justice and Culture, a growing database of primary documents, aims to preserve artifacts of LGBTQ+ history and culture from around the world—particularly those that are at risk of disappearing
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LGBTQ+ Social Justice and Culture (SJ&C) is an index and a repository for documents, including activist videos, audio, blogs, zines, government reports, conference presentations, and more, created by members of the global LGBTQ+ community between 1980 and the present. It focuses on items that are at risk of disappearing, either because the internet isn’t really forever or because these materials are created or hosted in places hostile to LGBTQ+ rights.
Part of the History Commons platform owned by Coherent Digital, the database is easy to use, with a robust search engine. Despite some concerns about accessibility, I highly recommend this database for academic libraries and for researchers at the undergraduate level and above.
The contributors to SJ&C range from well-known organizations like It Gets Better and GLAAD to lesser-known organizations like Qmunity and SOC: Sarajevo Open Centre. The database also includes materials from shuttered organizations including Ambi (US), Babilonia (Italy), Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (UK), and Beijing LGBT Center (China, which was closed down by the government) (Lester, personal communication, February 10, 2025).
Coherent Digital claims that “the collection is more current and globally inclusive than any other resource in the subject,” which is a fair assessment. The creators of the database actively seek out items for inclusion and solicit suggestions from their readers; the database contents are listed in a frequently updated index. Individuals and organizations can upload materials directly, even if they are not subscribed to the database.
Currently the database indexes 552 organizations from 72 countries. Twenty-six percent are from the United States. Fifty-three percent are from English-speaking countries, and the remaining 47 percent come from countries around the globe, including South Africa, Poland, China, Armenia, and Brazil. Fifty organizations are housed in the permanent archive, with 54 percent from English-speaking countries (including 20 percent from the United States), and the remaining 46 percent drawn from dozens of other countries. In addition to housing materials in the permanent archive whenever possible, the collection links to the original source (website, podcast, etc.) if it is still available. Each item also has a COI (Content Object Identifier) that links to a backup copy in case the original disappears.
This product was still in beta when I examined it for this review; it has since grown in size.
The website is simple but effective. From the home page, the user can upload material or copy and paste links to add to the collection. They can also register for an individual account, allowing them to upload material under their own name, follow topics/organizations/searches, create lists, and change their affiliation.
The eye is drawn to the search box, which contains icons for Advanced Search and Help. Below the search box are suggested searches, based on recent user searches and items from the news and popular culture (Figure 1). Scrolling down the home page, the user can see current stats on the collection (numbers of organizations, documents, and topics) and links to featured collections and topics (Figure 2).
I began my exploration of the database by searching for “Rock Hudson,” receiving 139 results. The search results show a thumbnail of each item as well as which organization it came from, a preview of the text with the search term highlighted, and examples of the matches within the text. On the left, facets allow the user to narrow the search results by content, document type, mentions (a measure of how often an organization is mentioned in the search results), source, series, language, year, topics, and date added (Figure 3).
Among other options, users can sort or export search results or “Follow” a search to automatically receive new results via email. They can add individual items to a saved list.
My search led me to a list of videocassettes held in the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives, which includes a documentary about Rock Hudson, along with a number of other interesting items: episodes of Ricky Lake, Donahue, The Golden Girls, Star Trek, and numerous news programs.
My next search, for “Decolonization,” received 146 results, including 74 videos (Figure 4). When I watched a video, it only showed the auto-generated closed captioning, and there was no transcript (Figure 5). When I spoke with Yoomna Rahim, the product engagement manager at Coherent Digital, she said that fixing this was high on their list of priorities (personal communication, December 13, 2024).
Finally, I went back to the homepage to explore the featured topics, which range widely: abortion, advertising, black market, children, censorship, education, family, international law (Figure 6). I selected “Historiography,” and was taken to a topic page showing a definition from Wikipedia and 22 individual results—publications and organizations—from the collection (Figure 7). Users can follow or share a topic. Each publication can also be saved to a list.
Coherent Commons is WCAG 2.1 certified, level AA according to its VPAT with accessibility testing conducted by Qualitest. The customer license agreement (see below) states that Coherent Digital is committed “to provide the most accessible version of the content on par with AA compliance; and where level AA compliance is not achieved, the VPAT will list the exceptions.”
My main concern with this database is that the videos lack closed captioning and transcripts unless they are provided by the creator of the work. Audio, however, has responsive transcripts, which can be hidden if desired.
Coherent Digital’s license agreement, available on the vendor website, allows for displaying, printing, and sharing material from the collection in a variety of contexts, including for teaching, research, and interlibrary loan. Text and data mining are only allowed with the purchase of perpetual rights. Alumni of academic institutions can use the database when they are physically on campus, but not via remote access.
COUNTER 5 and SUSHI usage statistics are available. Coherent Digital also provides MARC records, and works with ExLibris Summon and Primo, WorldCat Discovery, and EBSCO Discovery Service on knowledge bases for its platforms, although not all collections are available for every discovery service.
For content that is purchased in perpetuity, Coherent Digital will deliver archival copies to the licensee if they go out of business, stop publishing or providing access to the product, or they have not published or provided access to the product for longer than 90 days due to a catastrophic failure.
Annual subscriptions for the database are available on a sliding scale ranging from $400 for very small libraries and budgets to $6,000 for very large. The one-time purchase price ranges from $21,000 to $38,000 (Eileen Lawrence, personal correspondence, February 7, 2025). Coherent Digital has its own matrix for pricing, which considers the library’s budget, number of users, membership in groups and consortia like Jisc, Samenwerkende Universitaire Rekenfaciliteiten (SURF), and The Center for Research Libraries (CRL), and status as a historically black college and university (HBCU). HBCU libraries receive a discount that lowers their price a further 10 percent. Databases can be bundled together for additional discounts.
Coherent Digital supports the following authentication options: Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), EZProxy, registered user accounts, Home Area Network (HAN) server, and Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) such as Shibboleth and OpenAthens.
There are a huge number of databases about LGBTQ+ issues, both as a sole focus and combined with women’s studies, gender, and sexuality topics. While this is a good problem to have, it also means that comparing the databases is a difficult task.
One important database is the Digital Transgender Archive, a comprehensive, free collection of primary source documents about transgender history prior to the year 2000. Materials include photographs and artwork, periodicals, motion pictures, oral histories, transcriptions, finding aids, correspondence, and more from over 60 colleges, universities, nonprofits, public libraries, and private collections. While they do have some international materials, their stated primary focus is on the US and Canada.
Independent Voices is an open access digital collection featuring alternative press newspapers, magazines, and journals provided by the special collections of contributing libraries. Its primary focus is the United States. Independent Voices is one of many thematic collections in Reveal Digital, a part of JSTOR/Ithaka, which also hosts HIV, AIDS & the Arts, another open access digital collection that explores how art and artistic expression helped communities cope with the epidemic and support activism.
Paid databases include the Archives of Sexuality and Gender from Gale, and Clarivate’s GenderWatch and LGBT Magazine Archive. Clarivate’s Alexander Street has three databases: LGBT Thought and Culture, Queer Pasts, and LGBT Studies in Video. From Adam Matthew, there is Sex and Sexuality, Defining Gender, and Gender: Identity and Social Change, and from EBSCO: LGBTQ+ Source, LGBTQ+ Life, and Alternative Press Index.
Each database has its proprietary collections, which complicates the comparison. Most libraries will not be able to afford every database listed above and may not have academic programs that would justify the purchases. Except for Gale’s Archives of Gender and Sexuality, most of the collections above are also either US-centric or English-centric and the collections concentrate on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Each database has primary source materials, while GenderWatch, LGBTQ+ Source, LGBTQ+ Life, and Alternative Press Index also include scholarly resources.
LGBTQ+ Social Justice and Culture, while still a smaller database, has access to more international publications than its competitors. It is also a “living” collection that will expand as it indexes and archives more works. The advisory board, consisting of community members, students, faculty, and board members, works to grow the collection.
LGBTQ+ Social Justice and Culture has several strengths. It indexes unique materials from around the world, including places like Eastern Europe, China, and South America that are not targeted in other databases. The search function is easy to use, and the topics page makes it straightforward for a student to begin exploring the material. The editors are actively working with organizations to archive their publications and make them accessible. Their mission, to preserve endangered materials, is admirable and necessary in the age of born-digital material as well as increasing threats to research on this theme, especially right now in the US.
The organization of materials makes the database simple to use. Print materials are scanned at a high quality, especially considering the ephemeral nature of many of the items. For example, flipping through copies of Xtra! Vancouver’s Gay and Lesbian News shows not just advertisements and editorials but also what was happening each day of the week (“Bears in Excess: Leather Edition! Tuesday Feb 4th, 7-10:00 pm”) and a list of gay-friendly businesses in Toronto.
The database worked whenever I accessed it, which was impressive, considering it was in beta testing. The license agreement terms are generous, and the pricing, in my experience, is inexpensive compared to other primary source products.
The primary weakness is the lack of closed captioning and transcripts on the videos. Libraries may decide to refrain from purchasing this database until the company has resolved this issue. We all received the Dear Colleague letter from the Department of Justice, which put higher education institutions on notice that all online services must be accessible to people with disabilities or they will be sued. Whether or not political changes affect this guidance, we should all keep accessibility in mind as part of our ethical responsibility to our patrons.
LGBTQ+ Social Justice and Culture is a solid database, and I would recommend it for any library or college/university that has a LGBTQ+ community or program. This database can support programming, outreach, and research, and can be used by the general public, undergraduates, faculty, and researchers. The user experience is slick, and the pricing is fair for a primary source database. The focus on non-English speaking countries alone recommends this database for licensing or purchase.
Note: this article has been updated to reflect that the database houses 50 "organizations" in the permanent archive, not 50 "publications."
10.1146/katina-20250218-1
