Shoulders to Stand On

Do You Know Your History?

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Cornell Curator Helps to Preserve Our Local History

By Ove Overmyer
Reprinted from The Empty Closet, August 2008

In most professions, it really helps to be passionately in love with your work. Librarian, archivist and curator Brenda Marston is just one of those people.

As one of the country’s top curators, Marston has been in charge of Cornell University’s Human Sexuality Collection (HSC) since 1989. Even though Cornell is located smack-dab in the middle of New York State, the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley has been housing their history and administrative records in Ithaca since 1994. Brenda talks fondly of the GAGV’s collection, saying that “Rochester’s rich history is critical to our library. Cornell’s mission is two fold– national and upstate New York.”