San Francisco photographer Crawford Barton, who died of AIDS in 1993 at 50, donated thousands of prints and negatives showing gay life in the Castro to the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Historical Society.
He also gave many personal documents, often with a quirky touch. His 1992 datebook shows increasingly frequent doctors' appointments, and a notebook with the Muppets character Miss Piggy on the cover details his artistic and health woes.
"I feel like I'm a flop," he wrote as his work diminished. "There is no prescription for this."
In happier cases, donors say they are astonished to have survived -- thanks to new drugs.
For example, San Francisco gay activist Hank Wilson gave the historical society 17 boxes of materials in 1996, when he was at death's door with an AIDS-related brain infection from which he recovered. Some of the papers detail his controversial campaign to limit the sale of "poppers," the inhalants often used during sexual activity that he believes suppress the immune system and contribute to AIDS. Other papers involve the Tenderloin district hotel he operated for AIDS patients.
"We had a sense of historical energy during the '70s and '80s, and a lot of what we were doing was pioneer work," Wilson said in an interview. "I think it's interesting for people to see what we did, how we did it."
Dr. Marcus Conant, a dermatologist who was among the pioneers in treating AIDS patients, gave a lot of his papers in 1998 to UC San Francisco, where he taught. The library started an AIDS library collection 20 years ago.
Some of its oldest documents, including Conant's clinical notes and his requests for research funding, helped Randy Shilts write "And the Band Played On," the 1987 book considered the seminal exploration of AIDS' early years and society's fumbling responses. Shilts died of AIDS at 42 in 1994.
But now, as Conant sees new cases of HIV infection and AIDS, he questions whether the public and governments are heeding the archives' history lessons. "I'm not sure we learned anything," he said. "When I donated that material, I was probably a lot less skeptical than I am today."
Scholars, however, insist the archives -- along with similar collections at public libraries in New York and San Francisco -- will be invaluable as the epidemic enters its second quarter-century. For example, researchers are looking into such topics as the role of religion in the crisis.
