Milwaukee - Joseph Pabst, an advocate, activist, and philanthropist in the Milwaukee LGBT community, has created a fund to support the acquisition, processing, and preservation of materials for the UWM Libraries LGBT Collection and to promote the collection to UWM students, faculty, and the general public.

Pabst said the endowment - officially, the UWM Libraries LGBT OUTreach History Fund established by the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Johnson and Pabst LGBT Humanity Fund - supports an important objective.

“The UWM Libraries have the largest LGBT collection in Wisconsin,” Pabst said. “It’s a breathtaking collection that documents Milwaukee’s gay community from its beginnings. People in the community need to know about it and support it.”

Michael Doylen, Head of the UWM Libraries Archives, noted that Wisconsin has a rich LGBT history, but it is neither well documented nor widely known.

“For the last several years, the UWM Libraries have worked with organizations and individuals from the Milwaukee community to ensure that the record of our local history is preserved and made accessible to everyone,” Doylen said. “Joe Pabst's generous gift to establish the LGBT OUTreach History Fund gives us the financial resources to carry this mission forward. We're deeply grateful.”

Pabst established the fund in memory of his partner, Robert Johnson, an attorney, avid reader, and vocal advocate of LGBT issues. He said he hopes that others will contribute to the endowment.

This is not the first time Pabst has been involved in supporting the collection. This past fall, he offered a $1,500 challenge grant to preserve the audio recordings of /Gay Perspective/, an early 70’s radio program produced by the Gay Peoples Union. That challenge was met early this year.

Once preserved, those recordings will be digitized and included in a Web-based collection of print and manuscript materials documenting the history of the Gay Peoples Union, the first gay rights organization in Milwaukee. The recordings will be available on-site in the UWM Archives

and accessible to anyone with a computer.

To view the UWM Libraries LGBT collection, please contact Michael Doylen, Archives, (414) 229-6980 or Max Yela, Special Collections, (414) 229-4345,

Although a minimum of $40,000 is required to establish an endowment at UWM, the Libraries invite others to augment the LGBT OUTreach History Fund with donations of any size. For more information, please contact Susan Modder at (414) 229-2811