Historians up in arms about Chicago LGBT archive's future

The trouble began when a "For Rent" sign appeared in the window of an aging storefront in Edgewater....

For more than a decade, the Gerber/Hart Library and Archives has occupied this space on Granville Avenue near the rattling Red Line. But when word got out that the space was for rent and the library's board had quietly made plans to relocate to Rogers Park, a group of patrons and former board members protested. The group alleged that the library's long-standing president had effectively taken sole control of the collection, alienating many in the city's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and endangering the institution.

"This used to be one of the most attractive walk-in community spaces you could find," said John D'Emilio, a former board member and a professor of gender and women's studies and history at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "But in the last year or so it looks like the most disorderly resale shop you've ever walked into. It's an atrocity. Those of us who have gotten behind the locked doors of the archives room know it's being completely neglected and in total disarray."...