The Archives of Lesbian Oral Testimony (ALOT) was a scholarly research and archival project, founded in 2010.

As of November 2021, we are no longer creating user accounts, adding new content, or accepting donations.

Contact, access for researchers, and further information

For all questions and requests, including access to protected interviews, contact Special Collections and Rare Books at the SFU Library: scrb@sfu.ca.

Acknowledgements

ALOT was founded and created by El Chenier, Project Director and Associate Professor, Department of History, Simon Fraser University. 

We are grateful to everyone who contributed to this project. 

ALOT is actively seeking donations of materials and testimonies. Testimonies come in many forms: while much of the collection is comprised of oral history interviews in audio and audiovisual formats, we accept a variety of materials that bear witness to the lives and stories of same-sex and same-gender desiring women. Other materials may include radio, television, and film footage, home video and film, as well as accompanying materials such as photographs, t-shirts, flyers and other ephemera. The ALOT collection is international in scope. We accept both digital and analogue materials. Analogue materials are digitized for preservation and access. We create transcripts and/or indexes for materials as our time and resources allow. We recognize that donors and participants have different needs for their donations. We collaborate with donors to ensure that everyone is secure and comfortable in their participation in the project, and strive to accommodate a variety of donation scenarios in terms of physical and intellectual ownership, licensing, privacy, and access. Some of these scenarios may include:

• Donating materials that will be accessioned by ALOT/SFU Special Collections, digitized (if materials are analogue), and made available online on the ALOT website.
• Donating analogue materials that can be returned to the donor after digitized, but the digital copy is accessioned by ALOT/SFU Special Collections and made available online on the ALOT website.
• Making arrangements for ALOT to digitize and/or host materials that may be in other repositories’ holdings, but where these repositories need assistance with making these materials available online.

For more information about donating to ALOT or to discuss a potential donation, contact us or view our example Donation Agreement. This Donation Agreement can be amended and will not be used in the scenarios where ALOT is only hosting materials online.