Library has come a long way

When Ronni Sanlo was growing up, she always thought she was made wrong. From elementary school through college, she scoured library books for a description of a lesbian like herself. She never found a single one.

Sanlo remembers reading the 1962 Encyclopaedia Britannica, which defined homosexuals as men who sleep with other men. For lesbians, the book simply said, “see Sappho,” referring to an ancient Greek writer known for her homoerotic poems.

“So I went to the Sappho section and it said, “˜see homosexuality,’ and that was it,” Sanlo said.

More than a decade later, Sanlo read the novel “Rubyfruit Jungle” by author and screenwriter Rita Mae Brown after receiving it as a present.

“That was the first time I’d seen anything that looked like women like me,” she said. “It precipitated my coming out.”

Sanlo is now director of the LGBT Resource Center, which houses the Rae Lee Siporin LGBT Center Library. From its humble beginnings as a bunch of books in cardboard boxes, the student-run library has grown into the nation’s largest LGBT library on a college campus.

It is all because of Sanlo, who wanted to create a space for books that shows students there are others like them. Situated in a cozy room, the library now contains more than 4,000 books, movies, magazines and other materials.

A club of about 15 students, all working toward master’s degrees in information studies, manages the entire collection. The members of the club, called Library and Archive OUTReach, are students who plan on working in museums, archives or libraries, said Roderic Crooks, co-president and a graduate student in information studies.

Part of Crooks’ job is making sure the library is sensitive to hesitant users.

“Students dealing with coming out issues are really afraid to go into the library and pull a book off the shelf and check it out. They don’t want people to see them checking it out. There’s a fear of being labeled,” Sanlo said.

Tammi Kim, a graduate student in information studies, said she’s helped one student who shyly asked for resources about bondage and leather, and another who inquired about a guide ranking the top gay-friendly universities.

“As students, we’re a little more approachable, a little more on the same level … and people may feel more comfortable talking to another student,” said Kim, who is also co-president of Library and Archive OUTReach.

Though the students in charge of the library each typically work several hours a week, there is not always someone at the desk. At times, the library is intentionally unmanned, giving students privacy to browse the shelves.

While other libraries rely on security systems to keep users from walking out with books, the LGBT library relies on an honor system ““ students are allowed to check out books anonymously.

Even if no one’s at the desk, students can simply leave behind a slip of paper with information about what they’ve borrowed, then return the item later.

“It’s not like a regular library,” Crooks said. “Our emphasis is always on creating an environment that’s safe and welcoming.”

Jesus Ceballos, a chairman for Latino queer advocacy group La Familia, said he has used the library on several occasions.

As a third-year art history student, he has never been able to fit an LGBT studies class into his schedule, but he said he has learned a lot just by reading books from the library.

“There’s a diversity of literature there,” he said. “It’s an important resource to have, especially for people who are just coming out.”

There are other LGBT resources on campus, from the UCLA Film & Television Archive’s Outfest Legacy Collection to the Williams Institute Reading Room and Collection on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy.

The LGBT library has a range of materials, from biographies to erotica, novels to old issues of magazines.

Several years ago, the collection was listed on the UCLA Library’s catalog, and the usage of the collection reportedly tripled, said Dawn Setzer, director of communications for the UCLA Library.

But when the library was started in the early days of the LGBT Resource Center, it received few visitors.

The center opened in 1995 and was located in a renovated broom closet in Haines Hall’s basement. Two years later, the center moved to a 400-square-foot room in the Humanities Building, then Kinsey Hall.

In those days, the center had a balcony outside, overlooking Bruin Walk, where a rainbow flag was hung. Inside the center, there was a long conference table with numbered cardboard boxes beneath it. Those boxes contained the library’s first 100 books, which had been donated to the center.

“In the ’90s, there weren’t very many LGBT offices, so we were grateful to have one fully supported. On the other hand … there wasn’t the space to do the kinds of things we needed to do,” Sanlo said.

When students seeking counseling came into the center, there was no private area for a conversation. Instead, Sanlo would walk students to Jimmy’s Coffee House, where she would buy them a cup of coffee.

“A lot of the talks were just fine. But if someone was falling apart, it wasn’t a particularly good strategy,” Sanlo said.

The LGBT Resource Center finally moved into its current home, with quadruple the space, after Student Affairs converted the men’s gym into the Student Activities Center.

And in her design for the new LGBT center, Sanlo included a library. In the beginning, the shelves of the library held only the books from the cardboard boxes. But the shelves began to fill, and now the library has more books than it can hold. Every year, during the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, the library holds a small sale of its extra materials.

Sanlo, who will retire in October, has seen the library go from a cluster of boxes to a room with filled shelves. But the collection has always been a place where students could find characters or descriptions that resonate with who they are.

“We try to create a comfort level for (students). Here’s a great example: Someone will come in and go, “˜How many gay men are on the campus?’ In reality they don’t care, they just want to know if it’s OK to be a gay person on campus,” Sanlo said.