Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies

The Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies is a collection of LGBT historical materials housed in the Special Collections and Rare Books section of the University of Minnesota Libraries. It is located underground in the Elmer L. Andersen special collections facilities on the University of Minnesota's Minneapolis campus. The Tretter Collection houses over 40,000 items, making it one of the largest GLBT history collections in the United States. The collection is international in scope and is varied in media.

Although books are the core of the collection (including a large holding of gay pulp fiction), substantial sections include textiles, glassware, film, music, art works, and three-dimensional objects such as statuary, event buttons, and furniture. The collection includes unpublished manuscripts, vertical files, and periodicals in approximately 56 languages. Much of the material is from people and organizations in the United States during the last third of the twentieth century.

Among the significant archival holdings are:

The collection was started by Jean-Nickolaus Tretter, a Minnesota-born archivist in the 1950s, and later donated to the University of Minnesota Libraries.

Selected items from the collection and timelines are frequently assembled and displayed worldwide. Recent displays have been at the Motor City Pride in Michigan in 2007 and 2009, and the first Moscow, Russia Pride Festival in May, 2006.

In 2005, the collection started its official newsletter, "The Tretter Letter."

In 2006, The Tretter Collection, the University of Minnesota Libraries, and the Quatrefoil Library presented the first GLBT ALMS (Archives, Libraries, Museums and Special Collections) Conference in Minneapolis, MN.

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