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. This covers bibliographic description as well as archival description. 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 These words may be offensive, outdated, or dehumanizing, or may simply be words we'd like to confirm SCSC is using consistently and appropriately.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 sometimes 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 clearly a result of direct transcription. In these cases a note at the resource or series level will likely be both necessary and appropriate to clarify why certain terms remain in titles. However, we recognize that determining whether something is the result of direct transcription or not may pose a challenge.

Transparency

This documentation page is meant as an effort to be transparent about what Smith College is doing to rectify 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.

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Other potential projects

• Establishing standards for description going forward that encompass anti-oppressive practices
• Attempting to surface records related to the experience of underrepresented groups at Smith that may be hidden in collections, including in the "Class of" records.
• Enhance biographical/historical notes for individuals and organizations related to underrepresented groups.
• Change biographical/historical notes for individuals and organizations that do not follow the "inverted pyramid".
• Identifying the names of women formerly referred to in our description only as "Mrs. Husband's Name" and changing the description to identify them by their own names, when those can be determined.
• Consulting with reference staff to determine what topics related to underrepresented groups we get reference queries for and that we have material on, but that is not obvious from our finding aids.

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