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ONE Institute’s
Statement of Intent to
Integrate HIC’s collection

Dated December 15, 2001

The following text was sent to HIC by Cat Walker, Chair of the Library Committee for ONE Institute, The International Gay and Lesbian Archives, in ONE's attempt to take control of HIC's collection in the Winter of 2001. The body of the letter is reprinted unaltered and in its entirety.

Dear HIC People:

It has been a busy and productive year here at the 909 building. We have opened our doors, established regular hours, and hosted several events in our renovated space. Work with the library collection and the archival collections have also progressed dramatically since our unpacking earlier this year. As you know, our books had been in storage for years, and only in January were they unpacked. For the first time since the merger in 1994, the combined collections of ONE and IGLA were integrated into one main collection.

During the past months the Library Committee has prepared a draft collection policy statement which will be presented to the full board on December for final approval. As per our mutual agreement, we are now ready to reunite the collection of the periodicals and books of the HIC room with the main collections of ONE and IGLA.

We will not begin this project before the holidays, but intend to move forward with this final unifying of the books and periodicals by the first week in January. We would appreciate your assistance with both the re-shelving of the books from the HIC room and to determine if the duplicate materials will be handled differently from our normal procedures.

We look forward to our bright future together!

<Signed>

Cat Walker
Chair, Library Committee

Editor’s Note: At no time has HIC turned the rights or ownership of its materials over to ONE Institute. No written offer was ever made to the HIC by ONE Institute, though HIC's board had been assured one in the Spring of 1997. Oral agreements made by John O'Brien in 1997 were therefore tentative, and none of O'Brien's promises regarding autonomy, reimbursal for storage fees, representation on ONE Institute's Board of Directors, and a secured office space were ever granted or else were later retracted or repealed by other directors of ONE Institute.

Eventually, HIC's directors, including HIC founders Jim Schneider and Billy Glover, percieved ONE's intentions as hostile and decided to remove its collection with the intention of relociating much of the archives with the Vern and Bonnie Bullugh Collection on Human Sexuality at CSUN. The collection was successfully removed from ONE Institute's West Adams facility on Dec. 24th, 2001, despite Jim Morrow's (ONE Institute's secretary) attempt to have the materials detained and Schneider and White arrested. Morrow claimed that the materials in question "had been donated by S-1" (Subject 1, beign James Vernon Schneider), according to the official Incident Report as filed on 12/25/01. USC's investigating officers concluded: "The property did belong to S-1 [James Vernon Schneider] and he moved the property out of location."

Posted by C. Todd White • 9/23/03