Partner Spotlight - William Way LGBT Community Center

by Elise Aiello on Jun 28, 2023

This month, our Partner Spotlight will focus on the William Way LGBT Community Center John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives and Library in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We spoke with John Anderies, Library Director at the John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives and Library, to tell us more about the library.

Tell us a little bit about the library

We are the oldest LGBTQ lending library in the United States, founded in 1976 as the Library of the Gay Community Center of Philadelphia. Today we're called the John J. Wilcox, Jr. Library at William Way LGBT Community Center. We serve the LGBTQ community of greater Philadelphia and collect both fiction and non-fiction books as well as DVDs with LGBTQ themes and subjects. Almost everything in our collection has come as a donation from within the community and we currently have about 14,000 volumes. Anyone who lives in the greater Philadelphia area is eligible to become a borrower.

Tell us something unique/interesting about your library

We are in the midst of a capital campaign to begin renovations to our building. The renovated building will include substantially increased space for both our Archives and our Library, among other changes for the Center overall. At some point in the next several months we'll be packing up our collections to go to storage while renovations take place. While it will be hard to put a hold on our patron's use of our library collection, we're hopeful the time we are closed will go fast and the benefits of coming back to a beautiful new building will be worth the wait!

How does being a part of the open source community help the John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives and Library?

While we haven't yet taken direct advantage of the community of open source developers, we are grateful for the broad range of libraries and developers who have made Koha such a great catalog for so many. We are also pleased to be able to use an open source solution for our catalog, as it speaks to our institutional values to support open source software solutions above proprietary ones, whenever possible. Finally, working with ByWater Solutions has been a real joy. We couldn't have asked for a better migration experience and I'm always so pleased by the responsiveness when we do have issues or questions!

Learn more about the William Way LGBT Community Center here!