Polyamory Collection in the Kinsey Institute

On April 18, 2006, I received an email from Ken Haslam, regarding a press release from the Kinsey Institute. This document is reproduced below.


The Kinsey Institute is developing a new collection of materials on historical and contemporary materials concerning polyamory, intimate relationships and alternative life styles, based on a donation by Kenneth R Haslam, MD. This collection includes magazines, articles, books, correspondence, personal accounts and multimedia materials related to the polyamory community. The Institute welcomes other contributions and donations to this collection from contributors worldwide.

"We expect that scholars interested in studying contemporary sexuality and relationships will find this a unique resource useful," says Kinsey Institute Librarian Liana Zhou. "Dr Haslam has provided us with a good start for a welcome addition to our library collection."

The Kinsey Institute Library was built by Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey for his research on human sexual behaviors more then sixty years ago. Today it is an internationally known resource for the study of sex, gender and reproduction and is used by researchers, scholars, and students from many academic disciplines. The Library collections include film, archival and other special collections, and feature historical and contemporary erotica and research monographs. The Library has over 105,000 printed works that include sex magazines, pulp fiction, comic strips, tabloids, pamphlets and other cultural materials. Highlights of the archival collections include works and papers by Magnus Hirschfield, Albert Moll, Harry Benjamin, Robert Latou Dickinson, Alfred Kinsey, John Money, and other significant sex researchers.

The Kinsey Institute's research collections are privately owned by the Institute. All new additions are by donation or private funding. Donor gifts, both financial and material, are vital to the growth of the collections.


As a result of this email, I began corresponding with Liana Zhou, Head of the Library at The Kinsey Institute. As a result of this conversation I rewrote a version of the website that was more suitable for this archived collection. I put this entire copy of the website onto a CD, and on April 21, 2006 I mailed it off to the Kinsey Institute. They also said that they'd be subscribing to our email newsletter to keep track of all updates in the future. The Polyamorous Percolations online community has now officially been entered into the annals of history regarding polyamory!

A special thank you goes out to each of my staff members, contributing writers, and every member of our online forums for making this site worthy of this type of honor.

~Chias
April 27, 2006


Update, June 10, 2006: The Kenneth R. Haslam Collection on Polyamory has been added to the Kinsey Institute home page. This is a small section, but is monumental in the world of polyamory.