Last weekend I visited a queer archive library in Providence, RI, and it gave me a lot to think about. I read a zine by Paul Soulellis called Survival by Sharing, which is about archival work and makes a case for archives that are small, disorganized, private, and personal.

When I started Ace Archive, I felt a need to frame it as a big professional project and pretend it wasn't just one queer with no training working out of its bedroom. Maybe I thought I needed to justify its existence. As folks have started to discover the project (through no help of my own; I'm terrible at self-promoting), I think the justification has started to become evident. People are contributing with research and advice. The site gets a good amount of traffic. One person even curated an in-person ace history and art exhibit using Ace Archive as a resource. And most importantly, I'm starting to gain the confidence that maybe all the work I've put in actually means something.

That queer library we visited could hardly be called a library; it was a few unorganized bookshelves and a few bins full of zines sharing space with a print studio. It was beautiful. Putting queer history in queer hands and sharing it around feels so much more profound than locking it away in a neoclassical marble vault.

Maybe Ace Archive is allowed to be amateur. Maybe that's even the point.

I've also been thinking about this article on how to position yourself to customers as a startup. It advises founders to lean into the benefits of being a small company with small customers, rather than trying to pretend to be something they're not. I hesitate to equate this to Ace Archive--this is not a business and my values and goals do not align with startup culture or capitalist motives--but I think some of the advice is applicable. As I start to look for collaborators, I want to find people who value Ace Archive for what it is.

An idea I've had for the project for a long time is to curate content in the archive into "collections", so that people can browse and discover ace history more easily--make Ace Archive an educational resource rather than just a repository. I've dismissed the idea in the past because I was afraid it wouldn't "scale". But maybe it doesn't need to. Maybe I should be more realistic about how large this archive is actually likely to get and take advantage of the fact that I can personally browse and curate everything in it.

So I've done exactly that! I've already curated a handful of collections, and I'll likely do more as I have time and as new material comes in.

As always, if this project interests you, get in touch. Every person who contributes with research, advice, or even just a friendly hello warms my gay little heart.