Out On The Shelves Library is a non-profit, community library, built and cared for by volunteers. We are committed to being a space for cultural safety and community building, grounded in resources and programs that celebrate and strengthen queer culture.
Our Mission
Out On The Shelves Library aims to foster a free, accessible, and safe space for 2SLGBTQIA+ folks and their allies to gather, access library services, provide a platform for queer creators, and discover and share stories and resources centred on queer experiences.
Our Values
- Accessibility: We seek to create a library space that is accessible for people of all abilities.
- Anti-oppression and Social Justice: We are committed to a broad anti-oppression framework. We are an anti-racist, feminist, decolonizing, body-positive, and anti-ableist space.
- Decolonization: We acknowledge that this library operates on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the Musqueam people, and we are committed to examining how our actions and systems may reproduce colonialist ways of knowing, doing as much as we possibly can to transform these practices, and supporting Indigenous writers and readers.
- Education: We aim to provide opportunities for learning and growing to 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals and allies.
- Intersectionality: We recognize and affirm the unique histories and experiences of 2SLGBTQIA+ people with different backgrounds and identities, including Indigenous people and People of Colour.
- Privacy: We are committed to protecting the privacy of our patrons’ information.
- Own Voices: We believe in prioritizing the voices of 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals writing, creating, and reflecting their own experiences.
Our History
Out On The Shelves has been serving Vancouver’s 2SLGBTQIA+ community since 1983. The library has taken many forms over the years, but has always been a volunteer-run organization dedicated to making queer books accessible, and celebrating queer stories.
The name Out On The Shelves was donated by librarians Mary Murphy, Neil Richards, and Ron Jaremko of Saskatoon in 1983. They compiled a bibliography of gay and lesbian fiction titles called, “Out on the Shelves: a Gay and Lesbian Fiction List”. This was published by the Canadian Library Association, and distributed throughout Canada, the United States, and Britain.
