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]