University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Bodies of Evidence: Understanding the Transformation of Collections from Individuals to Institutions

Zhou, Liana H.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/101437

Description

Title
Bodies of Evidence: Understanding the Transformation of Collections from Individuals to Institutions
Author(s)
Zhou, Liana H.
Issue Date
2018
Keyword(s)
  • Information science
  • Information
  • Embodied experience
  • Collection development
  • Case study
Abstract
Alfred C. Kinsey was a biologist turned sex researcher of human sexuality with worldwide acclaim. One of his major achievements was to build a library of sex research materials. Kinsey and his followers have collected not only studies of sexuality but also evidence of sexual expressions—all together comprising more than 500,000 items now in the Kinsey Institute Library and Special Collections, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. This library of sexual expression constitutes a body of evidence for scholars and researchers to understand sexuality. In this article, the author, who has more than twenty-five years' collection development experience at the Kinsey Institute and is the head of its collection, will examine three self-documentation collections at the Kinsey, selected from the past fifteen years' acquisitions, to illustrate the range and scope of this type of material. This article is a descriptive case study, primarily of interest to librarians as practitioners of collection development and acquisition of special collections. The first is a collection of journals created by an individual who self-identified as a practitioner of Chinese Confucianism/Taoist principles, and who documented his life-long journey of self-sexual practices. The second is a collection of a man who practiced being crushed. Last, there is a collection of erotic albums created by an individual to document his experience of sexuality and aging.
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press. The School of Information Sciences at Illinois. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Series/Report Name or Number
Library Trends 66 (4). Spring 2018
Type of Resource
text
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/101437
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2018.0017
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2018 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Owning Collections

Library Trends 66 (4) Spring 2018: Information and the Body: Part 2 PRIMARY
Library Trends 66 (4) Spring 2018: Information and the Body: Part 2. Edited by Andrew M. Cox, Brian Griffin, and Jenna Hartel