Collection context
Summary
- Creators:
- Old Lesbians Organizing for Change
- Abstract:
- Old Lesbians Organizing for Change (OLOC) is a national organization for lesbians over the age of 60. Using education and public discourse, the core mission of OLOC is to combat ageism and increase the visibility of older lesbians. The majority of the materials in the collection are about the 1987 West Coast Conference and Celebration and its planning and programming. Also included is correspondence between members, as well as people on the steering committee.
- Extent:
- 1.2 Linear Feet (3 boxes)
- Language:
- Materials are primarily in English, some materials in Spanish.
- Preferred citation:
-
[Identification of item], Old Lesbians Organizing for Change Records, (Collection 2203). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
Background
- Scope and content:
-
This collection contains organizational materials for Old Lesbians Organizing for Change (OLOC), an organization devoted to combating ageism through education and advocacy. The majority of the materials in the collection deal with the West Coast Conference and Celebration, its planning and programming. Also included is correspondence between members as well as people on the steering committee.
- Biographical / historical:
-
After the publication of the book Look Me in the Eye: Old Women, Aging and Ageism by Barbara MacDonald and Cynthia Rich, a group of lesbians was inspired and empowered to start the First West Coast Conference and Celebration for Old Lesbians in Southern California. The event was held at the California State University, Dominguez Hills Campus in Carson, California in April 1987.
Out of the group that attended this conference as well as its follow-up in 1989, a group of sixteen lesbians went on to form an organization. At the first organizational meeting, a name was chosen, a statement of purpose drafted, tasks assigned, a coordinator designated and future meetings scheduled. The Old Lesbian Organizing Committee (later renamed Old Lesbians Organizing for Change) had begun.
Participation was strictly limited to lesbians 60 years of age and older. However, OLOC has always welcomed the support of younger lesbians while maintaining the need for separate space.
OLOC quickly established a newsletter with a national reach and began enrolling members. Early efforts were concentrated on educational materials on ageism, using familiar and effective consciousness raising techniques. These materials were pooled and published in The Facilitator's Handbook: Confronting Ageism: Consciousness Raising for Lesbians 60 and Over.
OLOC was a strong and highly visible part of the National Lesbian Conference in Atlanta 1991 as well as the March on Washington in 1993.
By 1992, OLOC sought and gained non-profit status, incorporating in the state of Texas. It achieved tax exempt status in 1994.
In 1996, OLOC held its first National Gathering, held on the campus of University of Minnesota at Minneapolis. In 1999, it held its second gathering in San Francisco, CA. The third was in 2002, again in Minnesota. The conferences are now held every other year.
OLOC continues to produce a quarterly newsletter called the OLOC Reporter, coordinate biennial gatherings, participate in the Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project and produce a line of age-positive, women-friendly greeting cards.
- Acquisition information:
- Provenance unknown. This collection is part of an outreach and collection-building partnership between the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives , the UCLA Center for the Study of Women (CSW) , and the UCLA Library .
- Processing information:
-
Processed by Stacy Wood, 2013. Description enhanced and further physical processing completed by Sabrina Ponce, 2017.
Collections are processed to a variety of levels depending on the work necessary to make them usable, their perceived user interest and research value, availability of staff and resources, and competing priorities. Library Special Collections provides a standard level of preservation and access for all collections and, when time and resources permit, conducts more intensive processing. These materials have been arranged and described according to national and local standards and best practices.
We are committed to providing ethical, inclusive, and anti-racist description of the materials we steward, and to remediating existing description of our materials that contains language that may be offensive or cause harm. We invite you to submit feedback about how our collections are described, and how they could be described more accurately, by filling out the form located on our website: Report Potentially Offensive Description in Library Special Collections.
- Arrangement:
-
Materials arranged by type and in chronological order.
- Physical location:
- Stored off-site. All requests to access special collections material must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.
- Rules or conventions:
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Access and use
- Restrictions:
-
Open for research. All requests to access special collections materials must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.
- Terms of access:
-
Property rights to the objects belong to UCLA Library Special Collections. All other rights, including copyright, are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue the copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright.
- Preferred citation:
-
[Identification of item], Old Lesbians Organizing for Change Records, (Collection 2203). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
- Location of this collection:
-
A1713 Charles E. Young Research LibraryBox 951575Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575, US
- Contact:
- (310) 825-4988