Inte bara väninnor : att söka och hitta lesbiska personer och representationer i arkiven.

Sammanfattning: The aim of this Master’s thesis is to research the presence of lesbians in historical archives. My material consists of interviews with four swedish archivists. The aim of these interviews is to research the priorities and the work that is beeing done at the archives concerning collecting material that is missing in the archive and making existing material related to lesbian lives accessible. Furthermore I have interviewed people working on projects that focuses on lesbian visibility through historical material and archives. The aim of these interviews is to get the users point of view on accessibility and improvements that can be made. In addition to the interviews, I have studied what the Archival law and the Swedish National Archives states about the roll of the archives in the Swedish cultural heritage. I have also incorporated a smaller search test to see if I get any hits on words that relate to gay women and lesbians. My theoretical framwork is grounded in postmodern archival theory because of it’s viewpoint on the archivist as creator of history. The theory focuses on a more concious approach towards the material and the way history is made through the collections. I also used queer theory to analyze both the material and the working methods through a norm critical perspectiv. My conclusion is that a new set of search methods needs to be developed to give the archives a capability to comply with the laws and regulations – and at the same time give the users the best access possible. One of the solutions could be to use an umbrella term, as a suggestion the word queer, that indicates that an archive can be read as queer. In addition, the visibility of lesbians in historical archives would benefit from archivists with norm critical knowledge and awareness of their own power in creating history.