Please feel free to download the Timeline and add to it, make a Wiki about it, use the Timeline as a template and create your own! The LA&M looks forward to seeing the timelines that are created in the future. Additionally, the LA&M encourages individuals, clubs, and leather communities alike to use the Timeline as a way to tell your own stories and histories. As of January 1st, 2015, the Timeline will be removed from the website and made available by request.
Additionally, the LA&M is providing access to a PDF of the Timeline on our website’s Media Release page for the next six months. Therefore, the Leather History Timeline will be integrated into our collections (in its many updated forms). The LA&M does not purport to be the single authority on these communities, and the expectation of maintaining a document like the LHT assumes such authority, which does not align with the mission of the LA&M. It has become virtually impossible to record “leather history” in a PDF, particularly within a timeline that is maintained by a single institution whose focus is to collect, preserve, and exhibit Leather/kink/fetish/BDSM lifestyles through archives and memorabilia for historical, educational and research purposes.
We have thousands of records, artifacts, artwork, photographs, and films that chronicle Leather history in a way that just wasn’t possible in the earliest years of the LA&M. Therefore, the Leather History Timeline will be integrated into our collections (in its many updated forms).Īs the LA&M moves into 21st century, our collections and our institution have grown significantly-we hired a full-time archivist on staff, have significant numbers of volunteers and interns working to process, describe, and provide access to our holdings we have increased our digital presence through social media, our online public access catalog Leather Archives Systems Holdings (LASH), and through our finding aids available on the LA&M website.
It has become virtually impossible to record leather history in a PDF, particularly within a timeline that is maintained by a single institution whose focus is to collect, preserve, and exhibit Leather/kink/fetish/BDSM lifestyles through archives and memorabilia for historical, educational and research purposes. The LA&M stopped updating the timeline on June 30th 2014 and removed it from the website on January 1st 2015.
The last update of the Leather History Timeline was made in February of 1999. Several editions of the time line have been published since then. I performed the intial conversion of the timeline from PDF to HTML for the Leather Archives & Museum (LA&M) web site.