August is Nudist History Month, and it’s a good occasion to look at the infrastructure that makes nudist history possible to study in the first place.
The Nudist Research Library Consortium (NRLC) is an informal cooperative agreement among five independent research libraries in the United States and Canada, operating together for more than eight years with a shared mission: preserving and archiving the history of social nudism while improving access through digitization and information sharing. These five are far from the only institutions doing this work. Nudist libraries and archives exist elsewhere in the world of course, but the NRLC represents a sustained, collaborative effort to connect collections, coordinate research assistance, and make the historical record of the movement more accessible than any single library could manage alone. The consortium is actively seeking other naturist libraries, archives, and significant private or institutional collections interested in becoming affiliate members.
The five member libraries span the continent. The American Nudist Research Library (ANRL), founded in 1979 at Cypress Cove Resort in Kissimmee, Florida, is the oldest, with four decades of magazines, newsletters, ASA and AANR documents, and video materials—all magazines and newsletters now electronically scanned. The Western Nudist Research Library (WNRL)—where I serve as a board director—is a volunteer-run nonprofit founded in 2006 at Glen Eden Sun Club in Temescal Valley, California, holding books, magazines, film, photographs, and artifacts, some more than a century old, including special collections such as the Ray Connett Collection, the Carl Hild Collection, and bound editions of Die Schönheit. The Naturist Education Foundation Research Library (NEFRL), established in 2014 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, is one of the largest publicly accessible naturist collections anywhere, with more than 16,000 magazines and 1,000 books, and offers a Digital Loan program for registered patrons—registration is free. The Federation of Canadian Naturists Research Library (FCNRL), established in 2022 at Bare Oaks Family Naturist Park in Ontario, preserves Canadian and international naturist publications and FCN records. And the AANR-NW Regional Archive, founded in 2008 at Willamettans Family Nudist Resort in Springfield, Oregon, archives the history of family nude recreation across the Pacific Northwest.
Together the five libraries offer something no single institution could: overlapping, cross-referenced collections that trace the full arc of organized nudism in North America. For researchers doing serious work, the NRLC’s Trusted Researcher program extends that access further—a limited number of qualified researchers producing publishable work may apply, for an annual fee, for remote access to scanned materials across all five collections. Any of the participating libraries can accept applications. 🪐
