Paul Fasana

Paul Fasana (died April 2021) was an American librarian and archivist.^[1]

Born in Utah to Mary and Oreste Fasana, he moved to San Francisco by age six.^[2] He enlisted in the U.S. Army and served the Korean War.^[3] He used funding from the GI Bill to enter the University of California, Berkeley, receiving a bachelor's degree in 1959 and a Master of Library Science in 1960.^[3] He came out as gay during his masters studies.^[1] On graduation he began working at the New York Public Library (NYPL) in cataloguing, and subsequently worked at Itek Corporation and Columbia University Libraries before returning to NYPL as a vice president and Director of the Research Libraries.^[3] He retired in 1995.^[4]

From his retirement until his death, Fasana served in a volunteer capacity as the chief archivist of the Stonewall National Museum and Archives (SNMA). He was responsible for organizing three warehouses of content into a single accessible collection. A SNMA executive director said "More than any other single individual, [Fasana] is responsible for the richness of the vast archives at Stonewall... Future generations of scholars and researchers will owe him a debt of gratitude".^[1]

A named fellowship at UC Berkeley supports School of Information students "whose research interests or studies are related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and/or queer studies in any field or discipline".^[5] The SNMA archival collection is named the Fasana/Graham collection in recognition of Fasana and his longtime partner Robert Graham.^[1]

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