Remediating Harmful Language in CONTENTdm Metadata

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Orbis Cascade Alliance Summer Meeting July 19, 2023 

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Junghae Lee, E-resources Metadata Librarian

Martha McTear, Special Collections Cataloging Librarian

Benjamin Riesenberg, Metadata Librarian

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Overview

• Background of CritCat and Pilot Project to remediate harmful language in metadata

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• Challenges and issues encountered during the project

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• Decisions and next steps derived from the project

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Background

• CritCat group 
• Started with 5 staff from Cataloging, Special Collections, & East Asia Library in Winter 2021
• Critical Cataloging and Archival Description Statement 
• Includes attempt to explain complexities of issues & technical limitations on remediation
• User Feedback 
• Feedback form: for users to request changes to metadata 
• E-mail to uwlib-critcat@uw.edu

Critical cataloging & archival description

CritCat feedback form

• Link to resource (Primo permalink                                                              for catalog record)
• Title of name of resource
• Brief description of the issue 
• Suggestions for alternative terminology or wording
• Please share links to any related resources supporting the change, if available.
• Internal UW Libraries request? 
• For tracking requests created internally in UW Libraries
• Would you like us to follow up with you directly?

Form response spreadsheet

Harmful term "Eskimo(s)" in digital collections and related metadata

• Received a user request to change the term "Eskimo" in the Hegg Collection in December 2022 
• Changed the titles and LCSH for 9 photo records from "Eskimo(s)" to the narrower term "Inuit" in CONTENTdm through cataloging workflow
• Identified the term "Eskimo(s)" appearing more than 700 times across multiple collections 
• Initiated discussions on how to remediate this issue on a broader scale

Pilot Project

• Planned to make a model for future metadata remediation projects 
• Began with 6 staff from Metadata Implementation Group with cataloging/metadata/systems backgrounds 
• Identified a CONTENTdm collection with "Eskimo(s)" on a small scale: Harriman Alaska Expedition of 1899 Collection

Challenges

Multiple fields within each record that may contain harmful language

• Free text
• Title
• Notes
• Controlled vocabularies
• Subjects
• LCSH/LCTGM
• Harmful terms still in use officially
• Rarely one-to-one replacement

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Eskimo woman and children in camp dressed in reindeer-skin parkas and sealskin boots, Plover Bay, Siberia, July 1899.

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Harriman Alaska Expedition Collection

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Challenges

Metadata in multiple platforms and formats

• Changes need to be made beyond CONTENTdm
• Digital collections (item metadata and collection landing pages)
• Finding aids
• Catalog records
• ...
• Metadata should be consistent across platform/format

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Challenges

• Replacing harmful language content
• What terms need to be reviewed and potentially replaced? What terms will replace them?
• Who makes the decisions? Who does the work?
• Where do we start making changes? Should we make changes to the digital collections before making them to the finding aid, or should changes always begin with the finding aid?
• How do we ensure that all related metadata is updated and consistent across platforms?

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Challenges

• Maintaining and promoting workflows and communication
• Multiple groups and individuals have been working on remediation projects, but weren’t necessarily communicating with each other
• Staff turnover since inception of original UW Critical Cataloging and Archival Description workflows had led to some breakdowns in communication about workflows
• Original UW Critical Cataloging and Archival Description workflows were geared towards user-submitted requests for changes and not necessarily larger remediation projects

Solutions

Pilot project needs aren't technical, they are mostly to do with communication

Ask stakeholders to participate

Archival finding aid

MARC records

Copy-negative database

Digital collections metadata

Critical cataloging group, pilot project group

Proceed using existing workflows�Provide feedback

• Submit the feedback form
• Follow steps in the existing workflow
• Where these don’t work, provide feedback and make changes as needed

Record data provenance

• Pilot project will most likely use broader terms to replace harmful language; if an equivalent term is made available to replace harmful LCSH term "Eskimos" in future, we may wish to find where it has been replaced and implement the new equivalent term
• Information about the extent and nature of harmful-language remediation work may be desired in future

Record data provenance

PROPOSAL

• Store deprecated metadata values within the digital-collections platform, avoid the need to maintain a separate data store

Proceed using existing workflows�Provide feedback

• Submit the feedback form
• Follow steps in the existing workflow
• Where these don’t work, provide feedback and make changes as needed

For future

• Opportunities for improvement
• For example, solicit feedback from affected communities
• Challenges
• For example, limitations on human resources

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More form submissions and additional projects await!

Thank you / Q&A

Junghae Lee�jlee70@uw.edu

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Martha McTear mmctear@uw.edu

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Benjamin Riesenberg ries07@uw.edu