Penn Sexuality Collection

The Penn Sexuality Collection was founded in the early 2020s to rapidly expand the Libraries' primary source holdings of material related to sexuality, especially material that is used, uncommon, or prone to theft. Through collaborations with specialty book vendors and a large gift of duplicate copies of books from the William Way Center, the collection exceeded 5000 titles within a few years. However, this collection does not include the many related special collections at Penn or the enormous number of primary and secondary titles collected over time and on an ongoing basis as part of our general collections. 

Most banned books concern sexuality. No subject probably, other than politics, elicits such emotional responses. Penn has committed to collecting broadly in sexuality studies with all the attendant risks involved because departments from Biology to English have an interest in the subject. 

The Penn Sexuality Collection could contain more controversial books and magazines, but it does contain materials that would be a stretch for many libraries. The bulk of it is devoted to primary sources that would inform research in a wide array of topics in sexuality studies. Various categories included are pulp fiction, sales catalogs, and pictorial works. 

Pulp fiction, for those unfamiliar with the genre, is often loosely reduced to lurid subjects whether of a violent or sexual nature or both. The reason it is called “pulp” is because of the cheap paper it is printed on. It is collected more in depth by other universities, still we have a good representative collection. Of course, some of them have humorous titles like “Dottie’s Wicked Aunt!” and “Uncle Willie.” 

The sexuality collection also includes quite a few “how to” manuals. Many deal with how to work with rope and others are more devoted more day-to-day subjects such as building successful relationships. 

The designation “sexuality” is broadly defined so there are also a lot of titles that are PG that may simply have to do with gender and politics like Kate Bornstein’s famous Gender Outlaw. Another feature of the collection is its international scope. Many of the titles are in languages other than English including Japanese and Italian. Because much of the collection is somewhat fragile it is housed in LIBRA, the offsite storage facility. 

The collection will continue to grow to support ongoing interest in sexuality in the university.