The Sixteenth International Conference on Books, Publishing & Libraries

Abstract

Southern Indiana, in the heart of America’s conservative middle region, has the world’s largest library dedicated to the topic of sex, and not many people know how that strange circumstance came about. It began in the 1940s as pioneering American sex researcher Alfred Kinsey’s collection of sex-related books, art, and ephemera; that collection eventually became part of Kinsey’s “Institute for Sex Research” (later renamed the Kinsey Institute) at Indiana University. Initially open only to Institute personnel and researchers personally approved of by Dr. Kinsey, the library some people would call the most interesting one in the world was the center of a lawsuit in the late 1950s. That lawsuit eventually made the Institute’s library riches available to users all over the world. Today, the Kinsey Institute Library is a quiet place with a collection that would shock the sensibilities of many people. That it exists at all is a testament to the determination, in the 1940s and 1950s, of a group of researchers to demystify the subject of sex in American culture and to apply scientific principles to the study of it.