The Social Ecology of Digital Archiving in Queer Arts Spaces

Like many LGBT+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community organizations, Reelout Arts Project Inc.
provides resources to people who experience social or geographic isolation particularly through their
annual film festival and community film library. For these resources to reach broad audiences, however, they
must be able to connect with those who are searching for relevant material. The success of search results
has much to do with the organization of information online: the ways in which resources are described,
compiled, and presented to users. For marginalized communities, culturally relevant descriptive text
(metadata) is needed in order to effectively search and discover materials, and that text must be defined by
the communities themselves. In partnership with Reelout, this project will conduct research toward the
creation of a best practices document regarding LGBT+ metadata and, using this, create an online library
database and online exhibits to increase access to Reelouts collections, resources, and festival.

Faculty Supervisor:

Susan Lord

Student:

Tamara de Szegheo Lang

Partner:

Reelout Arts Project Inc.

Discipline:

Medicine

Sector:

Digital media

University:

Program: