Anti Oppressive Description

Anti-oppressive description efforts

Smith College Special Collections is actively working to assess existing description of its materials (collections, rare books, digital content, etc.) and consider where gaps exist our in past description work that have hidden the experiences of marginalized and underrepresented groups. As of July 2020, Renee Pelletier is working 2 days per week specifically on efforts related to anti-oppressive description in the archives and special collections. Thus far, this work includes the following:

Examining existing notes for specific terms

For collections in ArchivesSpace, Michelle Paquette is using SQL queries to generate reports identifying notes on resources and archival objects in ArchivesSpace that contain specific words. These words may be offensive, outdated, or dehumanizing, or may simply be words we'd like to confirm SCSC is using consistently and appropriately. Renee is then analyzing these reports to determine whether the word is appropriate in context as-is, needs added contextualization, or needs to be changed completely. In cases where changes are made, a Revision Statement will be added to the finding aid noting what sort of change was made. The exact language of the revision statement is TBD.

A similar effort will be made for rare books, reporting via CCL search in Aleph, and using MarcEdit or Aleph's global changes features to make changes.

Examining existing series and folder titles for specific terms

Similar to the analysis of terms in notes, Michelle will use SQL queries to generate reports identifying archival object titles in ArchivesSpace that contain specific words, which Renee will again analyze. Unlike the text in notes, these titles are often direct transcriptions from folders or other containers from the donor or seller. As SCSC is committed to preservation of the historical record, we will not be making changes to description that is a result of direct transcription. However, we may identify cases where a note at the resource or series level is both necessary and appropriate to clarify why certain terms remain in titles.

Transparency

This documentation page is meant as an effort to be transparent about what Smith College is doing to rectify past descriptive practices and improve descriptive practices going forward. We recognize that this work is largely being done by two white women, and so understand that we may get this wrong or miss things. If you have comments or suggestions about our work, please email Michelle Paquette or Renee Pelletier with feedback.

This page will continue to be updated as new tasks are undertaken and/or completed.