Paul Fasana (died April 2021) was an American librarian and archivist.Hugh Ryan (28 June 2023)
The Unknown Librarian Who Saved Queer History
''Harper's Bazaar''. Born in Utah to Mary and Oreste Fasana, he moved to

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

by age six. He enlisted in the

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of the United Stat ...

and served the

Korean War The Korean War (25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) was an armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula fought between North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea; DPRK) and South Korea (Republic of Korea; ROK) and their allies. North Korea was s ...

.Alumnus Paul Fasana (M.L.S. '60) and Why He Gives Back
(3 June 2019). Berkeley School of Information. He used funding from the

GI Bill The G.I. Bill, formally the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). The original G.I. Bill expired in 1956, but the te ...

to enter the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, receiving a bachelor's degree in 1959 and a Master of Library Science in 1960. He

came out Coming out of the closet, often shortened to coming out, is a metaphor used to describe LGBTQ people's self-disclosure of their sexual orientation, romantic orientation, or gender identity. This is often framed and debated as a privacy issue, ...

as gay during his masters studies. On graduation he began working at the

New York Public Library The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second-largest public library in the United States behind the Library of Congress a ...

(NYPL) in cataloguing, and subsequently worked at Itek Corporation and

Columbia University Libraries Columbia University Libraries is the library system of Columbia University and one of the largest academic library systems in North America. With 15.0 million volumes and over 160,000 journals and serials, as well as extensive electronic resources ...

before returning to NYPL as a vice president and Director of the Research Libraries. He retired in 1995.Celebrating the Legacy of Paul Fasana
(15 June 2021). Berkeley School of Information. From his retirement until his death, Fasana served in a volunteer capacity as the chief archivist of the

Stonewall National Museum and Archives Stonewall National Museum and Archives (SNMA, officially Stonewall Library & Archives Inc.) is a nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization in Fort Lauderdale, Florida that promotes understanding through preserving, interpreting and sharing the ...

(SNMA). He was responsible for organizing three warehouses of content into a single accessible collection. A SNMA executive director said "More than any other single individual,

asana An āsana (Sanskrit: आसन) is a body posture, originally and still a general term for a sitting meditation pose,Verse 46, chapter II, "Patanjali Yoga sutras" by Swami Prabhavananda, published by the Sri Ramakrishna Math p. 111 and late ...

is responsible for the richness of the vast archives at Stonewall... Future generations of scholars and researchers will owe him a debt of gratitude". A named

fellowship A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned or professional societies, the term refers ...

at UC Berkeley supports School of Information students "whose research interests or studies are related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and/or queer studies in any field or discipline".Paul Fasana LGBTQ Studies Fellowship
Berkeley School of Information. Retrieved 17 July 2023. The SNMA archival collection is named the Fasana/Graham collection in recognition of Fasana and his longtime partner Robert Graham.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fasana, Paul 2021 deaths American archivists Librarians from Utah