Introduction:
Libraries and archives exist within the context of structural inequities and systems of oppression that can introduce conscious or unconscious biases into our work. Despite long standing perceptions otherwise, our repositories and collections, our professional practices as librarians and archivists, and ourselves as individual practitioners are not “neutral.” As we describe and categorize materials, we inevitably communicate biases and judgments through our interpretations. For this reason, the Critical Cataloging, Archival Description, and Metadata Working Group (CritCat) are committed to taking a critical approach when making decisions about the language used to describe library resources in catalog records, archival finding aids, and digital collections metadata. The UW Libraries has established a Harmful Language in Descriptive Resources Feedback Form for patrons and staff to flag language needing remediation so we can address it.
Essential Form Features and Functions:
We set up our form using Google Forms because of its intuitive user interface and ability to export responses to an Excel spreadsheet. In addition, we are able to add columns to the spreadsheet for administrative purposes including a column to assign a staff responder, a column for remediation status notes, and a column to mark when the issue has been resolved. In crafting the form, it was important for the user to have the option to either submit feedback anonymously or provide contact information if they wished to receive updates on their remediation query.
As the use agreements between the University of Washington and Google evolve, we are looking into alternative form options. As a group, we would like to be able to embed the form link and harm statement in every record across our catalog, digital collection, and archival finding aid repositories, but due to the uncertainty of our future with Google, we are waiting to implement.
How the Form Looks:
Below are images of the Google form being used by UW libraries. If the individual submitting the form chooses to stay informed, they can select ‘yes’ to question five leading to two additional fields to submit their name and email address. No one outside the CritCat group has access to the form responses or contact information of respondents.
How UW Librarians and Archivists use the Feedback Form:
Once someone has submitted feedback, participating members in the Critical Cataloging, Archival Description, and Metadata Remediation working group receive an email. Then the working group coordinator/chair will assign a respondent to the question, send our initial auto response, and finally take it to the group’s meeting to discuss the question. We record our decisions in the form and when the remediation is completed, we note that in the form as well. After initial conversations, a smaller working group is formed to work on the project and report on the status to the wider group during meetings. At this point, remediation work takes place and documentation is created and stored in GitHub.
Lessons Learned:
To date (January 2024), 17 responses to the form were made by library staff members and two were submitted by community members but through a staff person. In those cases, the patron spoke with a library staff member about a term that should be replaced and the responding librarian or archivist submitted their feedback. In both instances, the community member was interested in hearing the feedback and being involved with the remediation process so didn’t request anonymity.
Some remediation required only minor edits in a record, while two submissions resulted in larger remediation projects. We believe embedding a link to the form into public-facing records will generate more traffic from non-library professionals and allow for patrons to submit the form without the assistance of a librarian.
The sources provided by the respondent for an alternative term through the form have proven useful and illuminated where remediation efforts can get more complicated. For example, one respondent suggested replacing ‘Eskimo’ with ‘Inuit’ based on a specific item in a digital collection. Other instances of the word ‘Eskimo’ appearing in the same digital collection depicted people who were not Inuit. We learned that a simple find and replace would not work for this collection, and embarked on a longer term project to enhance records where the term ‘Eskimo’ appears. In another example, a specific tribe was able to identify a harmful term used to describe them in our digital collections and suggested their preferred term.
We have also found it to be frequently true that a harmful term is used in original material. For example, a term may appear in the notes of a collection creator or as part of a published book title. In these cases, the term cannot be replaced completely in a record due to the need to document an item’s historical relevance or to fully represent materials in context, thereby preserving our history.
Accountability:
In an effort to be as transparent as possible with our patrons and colleagues, we have a publicly available GitHub repository and post summary blog posts about remediation efforts geared towards a non-library-professional audience. When we launched the form, we wrote a blog post explaining the philosophy behind metadata remediation and making clear our stance on harmful and outdated language in our descriptive resources. Our work is still very much in progress, we have not yet solved all the issues encountered, and surely have not encountered all the issues to come. However, the workflows and documentation we established are proving to be sustainable and useful. If you have questions, please feel free to reach out to our email: uwlib-critcat@uw.edu.