San Francisco Chronicle (SF); Friday, October 11, 1991
L.A. Chung, Chronicle Staff Writer

The Gay and Lesbian Center will be a comprehensive research, literary, historical and archival collection, placed in a prominent location of the library, which will be completed in 1995.

"It's important for people to know we are serious and that we have the capability to preserve historical material and make it accessible," said City Librarian Ken Dowlin.

The center will be one of four centers in the new library, which will be built in Marshall Square, adjacent to the present library site. The other centers include the Ethnic Heritage Center, the Newcomers Center and a Business and Government Information Center, said Dowlin.

Some pioneering members of the gay community were present, including Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, who in the 1950s started the Daughters of Bilitis, the nation's first lesbian organization. Dorr Jones, who started the Mattachine Society, a gay rights group, in 1948 also was on hand to applaud the center.

The first contributions to the gay and lesbian archive will be from film makers Peter Adair and Rob Epstein and Chronicle national reporter Randy Shilts.

Shilts, author of "And the Band Played On" and "The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk," donated 170,000 pages of manuscript from his research on the books and from his work in both print and broadcast journalism. He appealed to gays to make provisions in their wills to donate significant documents to the collection.

"We're losing too many people to AIDS. We can't lose our history, too," Shilts said.

Adair, an independent film maker, is known for "Word is Out," the first documentary about what it is like to be gay. His latest work, "Absolutely Positive," a documentary about HIV-positive people, was released in February.

Epstein is a two-time Academy Award winner for his documentaries, "The Times of Harvey Milk" and "Common Threads: Stories From the Quilt," about the Names Project. The project memorialized people who died of AIDS in a quilt that takes up three acres when completely assembled.

Included in the 80 boxes of material Epstein donated to the library are work prints, tapes, film, interviews, news footage and manuscripts.

The public will have access to primary material previously unavailable. For example, said Adair, although film-goers have seen two hours of "Word is Out," no one has seen the 250 hours of interview tapes that he made while researching the project.

To prevent theft and deterioration, library visitors will not be allowed to handle the original material. Instead, a new computer imaging system, which will store all the material on optical disks, will be installed.

Always watch for outdated information. This article first appeared in 1991. This material is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between you and your doctor.

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