We leave pieces of ourselves in every place we visit, every home we live in, and throughout all kinds of physical spaces. In the digital age, that permanence is heightened — there's an additional record of everything we've done or said to our captured, internet audience. That's often terrifying, but it's also powerful, especially for under-represented peoples who fight to bring invisible stories to the fore.

Never has this been more relevant than now for LGBTQ communities, which have been habitually erased from mainstream history and face violating legislative efforts to limit their visibility and safety. Against this onslaught, the internet might be able to offer a counter-narrative, led by the individuals, nonprofits, and scholars documenting and mapping queer existence.

Mapping the Gay Guides is a historical database and mapping of LGBTQ spaces based on the midcentury gay-friendly travel guides created by Bob Damron, a businessman who kept track of his experiences as a gay man traveling around the United States from the 1960s on. Damron decided to systematize and sell his observations, similar to the historic "Green Book" created to help Black travelers find safe spaces around the United States, and in doing so compiled one of the largest and longest studies of this facet of queer culture from 1965 to 1980.

The Mapping Gay Guides website was created by Eric Gonzaba, assistant professor of American studies at CSU Fullerton, and Amanda Regan, a lecturer in the department of history and geography at Clemson University. The idea to transition Damron's guides into a digital resource came as they were both defending their dissertations, one with a focus on queer history in the 20th century and the other on women and gender in the 20th century, at George Mason University. Gonzaba was using Damron's guides in his research into gay male nightlife post-Stonewall; Regan, a digital historian who created software for fellow scholars, agreed there was potential to do more with the guides, as well as preserve a kind of oral history that is easily forgotten or erased.

Read the full article about LGBTQ mapping by Chase DiBenedetto at Mashable.