"Here, Walker discovered the charity's log books: pages and pages of call records written up by volunteers between 1975 and 2003. Collectively, they offered an evocative snapshot of LGBTQIA+ life in the UK during decades of great progress and seismic trauma: from the gay liberation movement of the 1970s to the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, and onto halting steps forward for trans and gender-nonconforming people in the 1990s and early 2000s."
"Though there's something romantic about the way Walker stumbled on this queer treasure trove, the fact that it was stashed away also feels telling. Queer history isn't handed to us at school like stories of wars, kings and queens. Generally, we have to seek it out for ourselves. "When I started reading the log books and reaching out to past Switchboard volunteers, [former volunteer] Lisa Power said to me: 'Tash, there's a PhD in the project you're embarking on,'" Walker recalls with a laugh."
Tash Walker discovered Switchboard's volunteer log books from 1975–2003 in a crawlspace, containing call records that capture LGBTQIA+ life across gay liberation, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and early trans progress. The log entries offer brief, urgent snapshots recorded during helpline shifts. Lisa Power identified the project's scholarly potential, but Walker and Adam Zmith instead developed a podcast, The Log Books, and expanded the material into a 400-page book, The Log Books: Voices of Queer Britain and the Helpline that Listened. The book selects entries as jumping-off points to explore overlooked or intimate moments in queer British history.
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