LGBTQ+ Center’s Josie Cohen-Rodriguez Named 2025 Library Excellence Award Recipient

For co-founding and co-leading the WSU Queer Archives with WSU’s Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, Josie Cohen-Rodriguez (she/they/ella) has been named the 2025 Library Excellence Award recipient.

Josie Cohen-Rodriguez

The award recognizes a non-library WSU faculty or staff member who has shown consistent support for the WSU Libraries. Recipients are chosen based on encouraging students to use the libraries; personal use of the libraries; personal support of or contributions to the libraries’ collections or services; interaction and cooperation with library faculty; and service on library-related committees.

“Our work between the LGBTQ+ Center and MASC in developing the WSU Queer Archives has been grounded in a love and respect for our place on the Palouse,” said Cohen-Rodriguez, the center’s student life and community coordinator. “The WSU Queer Archives is dedicated to the communities that came before us and paved the way for where we are today.

“Receiving the Library Excellence Award is a wonderful honor and helps affirm the work that we are doing to cultivate a vibrant and diverse community here in Pullman,” she added. “I am grateful for the continued support I’ve received from the WSU Libraries over my time here at WSU.”

Documenting queer history in MASC archives

According to Lotus Norton-Wisla, MASC interim head, WSU Queer Archives co-founder and co-leader, and Cohen-Rodriguez’s award nominator, the LGBTQ+ Center and MASC partnership has produced initiatives that would not be possible without Cohen-Rodriguez’s dedication, enthusiasm, and creativity.

Cohen-Rodriguez and Norton-Wisla started the WSU Queer Archives Oral History Project in 2023-24, hiring history doctoral student Drew Gamboa to help conduct interviews with LGBTQ+ alumnx, undergraduate or graduate students, faculty, staff, athletes, artists, historians, scholars, and others who make up the Palouse queer community.

The interviews are available online in the WSU Queer Archives Digital Collection, bringing together records from several MASC collections: the WSU GIESORC (Gender Identity/Expression and Sexual Orientation Resource Center) Records, 2000-2015; the National Organization for Women, Pullman, Washington Chapter Records, 1973-1995; and the Preliminary Guide to the Washington State Democratic Party Records, circa 1940s-2012.

Josie Cohen-Rodriguez and Drew Gamboa interviewed WSU alumnus Rigoberto Contreras April 1, 2024, as part of the WSU Queer Archive Oral History Project. Contreras details growing up in the rural town of Sunnyside, Washington, as a child of migrants, the importance of Catholic faith throughout his life, being a WSU undergraduate student, moving to Tucson, Arizona, to work as a mental health therapist for queer youth, and current life in Portland, Oregon. His full interview can be found in the WSU Queer Archives Digital Collection.

“Through her actions, she has increased awareness about the role of archives on our WSU campus and community, found LGBTQ+-focused materials in MASC and made them discoverable, and encouraged students and community members to get involved in the archives,” Norton-Wisla said.

In addition to her phenomenal work on the WSU Queer Archives, Cohen-Rodriguez is an enthusiastic advocate for the WSU Libraries. She cares about the work library and archives workers do and goes above and beyond to learn about library and archives theory and practice.

“I have seen her show students how to search the library catalog, help two faculty members bring their classes into MASC, recommend our fantastic interlibrary loan services to anyone seeking books, share our events, and encourage others to document history,” she said.

Cohen-Rodriguez also works tirelessly in service to WSU students and builds coalitions across the Pullman campus and the greater WSU system.

“I have learned so much from our partnership, and I admire Josie’s commitment to equity and justice through all parts of her job,” Norton-Wisla said. “She has brought this commitment to collaborations with the WSU Libraries in all she has accomplished through the WSU Queer Archives so far, paving the way for a myriad of possibilities ahead.”

‘We have always been here and always will be’

Cohen-Rodriguez said she owes much of her work on the WSU Queer Archives to Brian Stack, who developed the Palouse LGBTQ History Project with WSU Libraries and the Department of History when he was a history graduate student in Pullman. Now a history instructor at Spokane Falls Community College, Stack earned his master’s degree in 2015 and his doctorate in 2021.

“I learned a lot about the history of the LGBTQ+ Center through Dr. Stack’s work and was inspired by his research to continue digging to learn more,” she said. “When Lotus and I met in the fall of 2022, I don’t think that either of us imagined how much this project would grow and expand over the years.”

Cohen-Rodriguez and Gamboa interviewed Stack in 2023 for the WSU Queer Archives Oral History Project to talk about his undergraduate studies at the University of Rhode Island, graduate studies at WSU, and starting the Palouse LGBTQ History Project.

Josie Cohen-Rodriguez (third from left in grey sweater with Cougar head logo) and other participants at Lewis & Clark’s 44th Annual Gender Studies Symposium last March in Portland. Photo courtesy of Cohen-Rodriguez.

“Their stories are part of a web and legacy of activism that has helped build the community we have on the Palouse today,” she said. “The Oral History Project is ongoing, and I’m excited to see how it continues to grow as more students get involved in helping conduct interviews with not only queer elders, but also recent alumnx and current students.”

The oral histories are rooted in a desire to preserve LGBTQ+ stories and memories for future generations.

“I hope that students can listen to these and find tools and strategies for continuing to build coalitions and communities of care,” she said. “We want our future students to know that we have always been here and always will be.”

Students have been a central part of the WSU Queer Archives from the beginning, Cohen-Rodriguez said. She and students are learning more together about available resources in MASC and in the libraries more generally. During “Queering the Archives” events every semester, students, faculty, staff, and community members gather in the MASC reading room to look at historical collections and materials that WSU has archived.

“Through this work, we’ve built a much stronger relationship with librarians and student workers in the Holland and Terrell Libraries,” she said.

The events serve as an “Archives 101,” Cohen-Rodriguez said, helping introduce communities to an invaluable resource on campus.

“We’ve also started to see faculty and instructors bringing undergraduate and graduate students into MASC to look at LGBTQ+-related archival collections for their classes, which has been really exciting to see.”