On June 16, 2008, the National Library of Ireland officially accepted the Irish Queer Archive, a community-based archive of lesbian and gay historical and cultural materials, a transfer both literal and symbolic, marking the importance of lesbian and gay history to the nation's history. This essay briefly examines the issues associated with this transfer of materials to an institutional home, a transfer that confers legitimacy and authority but also raises questions about access and inclusion (particularly gender inclusion), as well as questions about the nature and purpose of queer archives. To illustrate some of these questions, the author offers a number of textual and visual materials: a small archive project of Irish queer history, concentrating primarily on literary materials (that have not been published or have limited availability) and organized around four broad categories of history, space, language, and performance. Included here are: excerpts from Sea Urchins, an unpublished but historically important play by Aodhan Madden, a play inspired by one of the most important public protests in Irish gay and lesbian history, the 1983 Stop Violence Against Gays and Women March; an unpublished English translation of one section of Micheál Ó Conghaile's groundbreaking novel, Sna Fir; examples of lesbian visual culture; a collection of poems from community journals (suggesting, perhaps, the importance of artistic expression to political activism); and imagery from Alternative Miss Ireland and the Emerald Warriors gay rugby club.
