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SSDN Introduction to Conscious Editing Series Part 2

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Panelists:

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Kelly Bolding, Princeton University

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Laura Hart, UNC Chapel Hill

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Meg Rinn, Bridgeport History Center

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Holly Smith, Spelman College

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Laura Hart

Wilson Special Collections Library

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Video presentation

PDF of slides

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CONSCIOUS EDITING: HISTORIC DEPICTIONS OF DISABILITY

Meg Rinn

November 2020

Bridgeport History

Center

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Bridgeport Public Library

Assistant Archivist

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Collaborative project between Barnum Museum and Bridgeport History Center

Grant funded by NEH

Combines museum objects and archival material

Description meant to be object based, even for archival material

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Visual Arts

Sierrawood School

02

CASE STUDY

P.T. Barnum Digital Collection

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WHAT DO YOU DO WITH HISTORIC MATERIAL FEATURING INDIVIDUALS WITH DISABILITIES?

The key tension

The reason these people were famous was because of their disability. Performances and promotion also emphasized that. It is why we have these documents in the first place! It was a job, and not everyone was coerced into the work either - some chose it!

A job

It's easy to say "oh, that's problematic!" but that doesn't engage with the nuance of these people's lives and experiences. They were complicated, and one size doesn't fit all in discussing them.

We gotta talk about it

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Visual Arts

Sierrawood School

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THE BUY-IN

    • We know that there are certain terms that are outdated and harmful - not carrying that over into contemporary description is important
      • Admittedly with PT Barnum, the name is your warning.
    • Some projects are high profile and misuse of language can and will have repercussions.
    • Determining language standards is a form of education and documentation. Identity language changes fast.
    • It helps set standards going forward

Why bother?

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Visual Arts

Sierrawood School

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WHAT WE DID

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Research on like collections was conducted to review language, metadata, descriptive choices, and more. We looked at museums, archives, digital collections, , books, and cultural heritage sites.

Like collections

A

As the project cataloger, it was my job to research what to do. This meant giving myself a crash course in disabilities studies, with an emphasis on the various critical theories.

Disabilities Studies

B

Our project team had a lot of conversations to figure out what to do, what we were comfortable with, and out limits (like LOCSH.) This lead us to create project standards that could be used post-project.

Discussion

C

Visual Arts

Sierrawood School

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RESEARCHING PREFERENCES

Because we were a project, we could sit and find out if any of our reoccuring players had preferences - and could accept that sometimes we might never know.

Some people did have preferences, but not as we'd really think of them today. But because we knew, we could address that in our written descriptions.

What we found out

Annie Jones actively fought against the use of the word freak.

Lavinia Warren’s autobiography speaks frankly of issues in her work.

Charles Stratton signed his name with “known as Gen. Tom Thumb”

Millie and Christine had explicit instructions and opinions about who could view their conjoining area.

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Such as...

Visual Arts

Sierrawood School

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BARNUM STANDARDS

Use of stage names only when discussing a performance or their career - otherwise, use their given name. So, Charles Stratton vs. General Tom Thumb. One is used for his private life, the other when discussing his act.

Use of “people with disabilities--” heading from LoC in conjunction with more diagnostic based headings because LoC doesn't have preferred terms. EX: Dwarfism or conjoined twins vs “people with disabilities--entertainers”

LoCSH

Model that connects both medical diagnosis and issues with social barriers to focus on individual experiences and nuance (as well as allow for greater flexibility with description barriers such as the one noted above.)

Complex Embodiment

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Visual Arts

Sierrawood School

Public/private personas

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BARNUM STANDARDS

Biographical information written for major players and placed in each applicable item in order to emphasize their full life, not just stage and performance

Statement in collection about language use to show due diligence and understanding, as well as act as a form of documentation.

Language statement

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Visual Arts

Sierrawood School

Biographies

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OKAY, BUT WHAT IF YOU DON'T HAVE THE LUXURY OF TIME?

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Visual Arts

Sierrawood School

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Dorothy said this in her part of the series but it is worth repeating: do what you can where you can with the resources available to you. You're not going to have a project that lets you conduct this level of research, and as archivists, catalogers, librarians, and other informational professionals, we have manipulate spaces we already have.

WHAT YOU CAN WHERE YOU CAN

Visual Arts

Sierrawood School

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Visual Arts

Sierrawood School

Acknowledge imperfect description

There will never be a perfect description. The minute you accept this fact is the minute you take a lot of stress off of yourself.

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Likewise, remember that identity language changes VERY quickly, and that something you might write now could be outdated in ten years. Or five. Or two.

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Visual Arts

Sierrawood School

Look at what spaces you can use

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Writing a finding aid? Use your scope and contents note and your biographical information to include relevant information about class, race, religion, ability, or other factors and provide some context!

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For example, writing "these circus handbills for Major Dot focuses heavily on Samuel's short stature. The material centers on his height because that was his major selling point. This marketing was not unusual for people of short stature who engaged in performance life in the late 1800s. However..."

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Visual Arts

Sierrawood School

Research the contemporary community

Working with historic material? Do some research into the contemporary community. See how they talk about themselves, and how they want other people to talk about them. Try and mirror that language into your description, be it through subject headings, biographical content, or whatever is relevant to your work.

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If you have time (and you very well may not!), reach out to the community. Tell them about your work. Invite them to the table. If there are limits, talk about those and see if they have suggestions for work arounds.

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But seriously, do the bare minimum and spent an hour or two researching the right terminology

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Visual Arts

Sierrawood School

Seek out nuance

Through my work, I found a model of disability called "complex embodiment", which acknowledges the medical and social elements of disability and strives to tie them together to discuss individual experience. Writing in this model let me work with the difficult tension of medical diagnosis being someone's claim to fame without only discussing the medical part of their life.

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Finding ways to talk about difficult subjects, or even just assign a subject heading, means thinking about the whole. This isn't JUST a person with a disability. They are an entertainer. So both get included in the metadata, not one or the other.

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Visual Arts

Sierrawood School

Avoid being didactic

There is a difference between saying "that was wrong then and it was wrong now" vs. "We can't even say how screwed up that was!" Avoid telling your patron how to think about a subject - they're processing complicated, heavy, and sometimes painful information. It's on you to provide the best guidance to think about how to approach a subject, but you can't say something like "never think about a person in terms of only medical information!" That turns them off and engrains the opposite way of thinking.

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THANK YOU!

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All images from the P.T. Barnum �Digital Collection��Visit ctdigitalarchive.org and

Click on “P.T. Barnum Digital

Collection!”

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Inclusive Description @ Princeton University Library

Kelly Bolding (she/her/hers)

Project Archivist, Americana Manuscript Collections, Princeton University Library

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Where am I coming from?

  • I am a white, queer, cisgender woman
  • I represent a dominant identity in the library/archives field
  • I work (on a term basis) as a processing archivist and chair the Inclusive Description Working Group at a wealthy, predominantly white institution
  • I am a member of Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia’s Anti-Racist Description Working Group

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Summary

  • Institutional Context: Well-resourced PWI with lots of competing priorities
  • Methodology: Large-scale, cross-repository description audit
  • Pros & Cons of this methodology
  • Takeaways

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How we got

here

  • 2016-2017: Manuscripts Division Description Audit and Ad Hoc Projects
  • 2017-2019: A4BLiP Anti-Racist Description Resources Research Project*
  • 2019-2020: Inclusive Description Working Group within the Archival Description and Processing Team

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Overview of Steps

  1. Research / Self-Reflection
  2. External Statement
  3. Internal Guidelines / Case Studies
  4. Description Audit / Survey
  5. Remediation (in progress)

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“Dismantling traditional conceptions of expertise requires flexibility and humility in being able to accept the limitations in serving as the authoritative voice on another’s experience.”

Jessica Tai, “Cultural Humility as a Framework for Anti-Oppressive Archival Description”

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Internal Guidelines

& Case Studies

  • Informed by A4BLiP
  • General focus with links to community-specific guidance
  • Iterative, living documents
  • Space for reflection

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Description Audit

Part 1: Engage

  • Publicizing Suggest a Correction button
  • Meeting with departmental colleagues to solicit feedback
  • Engaging students in critical discussions about archival description

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Description Audit

Part 2: Automate (with XQuery)

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  • Query existing finding aids to locate where description is doing harm
  • Recover histories that have been obscured by description (or lack thereof)
  • Multiple lexicon categories:
    • Slavery
    • Race/ethnicity/nationality/region
    • Indigenous
    • Colonialism
    • Women
    • Gender and sexuality
    • Bodies and ability
    • War
    • “Minorities”
    • “Unidentified”

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Remediation Example: Biographical Notes

ead:bioghist[ead:p[matches(string(.), '(\s|^)(influential|renowned|not(able|ed)|distinguished|reputable|prestigious|prominent|significant|respected|expert|important|prolific|ambitious|great(est)?|successful|wealthy?|fortune|famous|interesting|father\sof\s(the|American)|man\sof\sletters|genius|foremost|acclaimed|popular|celebrated|esteemed|(pre)?eminent|talented|exclusive)(\s|$)', 'i')]

https://github.com/kellybolding/scripts/blob/master/terms_of_aggrandizement.xquery

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Remediation Example: Biographical Notes

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Surfacing creators at the series- or component-levels with biographical notes and EAC-CPF records

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Remediation Example: Slavery Records

Before: “Slave bill of sale, 1794 April 2”

After: “Bill of Sale for Jenny, Enslaved Child, from Joseph Strong to Her Mother Lilpha, Norwich, Connecticut, 1794 April 2”

Strategy:

  • Name subjects to the extent we name creators
  • Provide names and geographical information that can help genealogists and other researchers identify enslaved people

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Remediation Example: Women’s Names

Before: “Willard Thorp Papers”

After: “Willard Thorp and Margaret Farrand Thorp Papers”

Strategy:

  • Correct collection titles and creator information when women’s contributions have been minimized or erased
  • Identify and provide fuller names for women identified only using their husband’s name

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Remediation Example: Transparency

Processing information note examples:

  • “Finding aid revised by Kelly Bolding in 2017 to improve description of enslaved people and separate materials that did not fit within the collection scope.”
  • “Finding aid updated by Faith Charlton in 2020 to elucidate Margaret Farrand Thorp's role as one of the collection's creators per inclusive description-related work.”

Internal change history also captured in version control and commit notes

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Pros & Cons of Large-Scale Survey Method

  • Generates data to demonstrate to stakeholders where the problems are
  • Helps us locate hidden voices in collections where we may not expect them
  • Provides options for staff to choose where to focus their redescription efforts
  • Easier to collaborate with appropriate people when focus of project is scoped more narrowly
  • Automated survey methods may require IT support depending on where archival data lives

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Takeaways

  • Use the tools you have
  • Prioritize changes that have a direct impact on users
  • Take action within your realm of responsibility
  • Get buy-in by framing redescription as an access issue
  • Make reparative work a factor in determining processing levels
  • Expect iteration

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Bibliography

Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia. Anti-Racist Description Resources, October 2019.

Dorothy Berry. “Digitizing and Enhancing Description Across Collections to Make African American Materials More Discoverable on Umbra Search African American History.” The Design for Diversity Toolkit, Fall 2018.

Celeste Brewer. “Eleanor Roosevelt Speaks for Herself: Identifying 1,257 Married Women by their Full Names.” News from Columbia's Rare Book & Manuscript Library (blog). September 9, 2020.

Michelle Caswell. “Teaching to Dismantle White Supremacy in Archives,” The Library Quarterly 87, no. 3 (July 2017).

Jarrett M. Drake. “RadTech Meets RadArch: Towards A New Principle for Archives and Archival Description.” Delivered at the Radcliffe Workshop on Technology & Archival Processing, April 4-5, 2016, in Cambridge, MA.

P. Gabrielle Foreman, et al. “Writing about Slavery/Teaching About Slavery: This Might Help” community-sourced document, Accessed 2020.

Lae'l Hughes-Watkins. "Moving Toward a Reparative Archive: A Roadmap for a Holistic Approach to Disrupting Homogenous Histories in Academic Repositories and Creating Inclusive Spaces for Marginalized Voices", Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies: Vol. 5 , Article 6, 2018.

Jessica Tai. “Cultural Humility as a Framework for Anti-Oppressive Archival Description.” in “Radical Empathy in Archival Practice,” eds. Elvia Arroyo-Ramírez, Jasmine Jones, Shannon O’Neill, and Holly Smith. Special issue, Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies 3.

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Amplifying Digital Collections & Description at HBCUs

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The “Our Story Project” and Spelman’s Digital Collections

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Holly Smith

College Archivist

Spelman College Archives

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Spelman College Archives

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  • Part of the Women's Research & Resource Center

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  • Institutional repository for Spelman College

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  • Document women of the African Diaspora

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The Women’s Research & Resource Center

Founded in 1981 by Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall

Houses the Comparative Women’s Studies program

Facilitates community programming & outreach initiatives

Mentors students in Afrekete, Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance, and other groups

Radical, progressive space for discussing ideas and research by/about women of the African Diaspora

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University Archives & Special Collections

  • Records of Departments & Academic Units (Women’s Resource and Research Center)
  • College Publications
  • Student Organizations (Feminist Leadership Majority, Afrekete)
  • Records of the Presidents at Spelman College
  • Dobbs Family Papers
  • Selma Burke Collection
  • Josephine Harreld Love Collection
  • Pamphlets & Ephemera
  • Event programs
  • Photographs
  • Alumnae Files

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Publications

Student Newspapers (Spelman Spotlight, Campus Mirror, etc.)

Official College Publications (The Spelman Messenger, Inside Spelman)

Reflections (Campus Yearbook)

SAGE Journal

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Audre Lorde Collection

Lesbian Feminist, Activist, Writer, Poet, Educator, Librarian

Collection contains correspondence, photographs, unpublished materials, course materials

Writings include powerful critiques of racism, sexism, and homophobia

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Toni Cade Bambara Collection

Feminist, Writer, Cultural Worker, Film-maker, Educator

Collection includes correspondence, drafts, scripts, audio and video materials (rough edits of documentaries), photographs

Of particular interest are the research notes for various writing and film projects

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The Our Story Digitization Project at the Atlanta University Center

http://digitalexhibits.auctr.edu/exhibits/show/ourstory

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Funding for this project was provided by a generous grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources.

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Collections

  • Clark Atlanta University: Atlanta University Catalogs, �Atlanta University Bulletin, Panther newspaper, �Theses and Dissertations
  • Interdenominational Theological Center: Bulletin of the ITC, Journal of the ITC, The Center newsletter, The Foundation newsletter, The Lantern newsletter, Yearbooks, Theses and Dissertations
  • Morehouse College: Yearbooks, Catalogs, Maroon Tiger newspaper, Photographs
  • Morris Brown College: Catalogs, Yearbooks, Photographs
  • Spelman College: Catalogs, Spelman Messenger magazine, Campus Mirror newspaper, Yearbooks, Photographs

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Digitized Spelman Publications

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Spelman Messenger,

November 1988

Spelman Messenger,

1988

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Yearbooks & Course Catalogs

Reflections Yearbook,

1971

Course Catalog,

1882-1883

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Digitized Spelman Photographs

Founders Sophia Packard & Harriet Giles with Seminary Students, 1886

President Johnetta B. Cole (First black woman president of Spelman) with students, c. 1988

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“Students in front of Tapley Hall”, c. 1950s-1960s

“The Old Maid”

1946

“Teachers Professional Course Graduates,” 1919

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Online Portals

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An example of the

importance of continued engagement and crowdsourcing for

metadata and description...

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Crowdsourcing Program

  • Public Program held during Spelman’s homecoming on October 24, 2019
  • Engagement with the reunioning classes ending in 4’s & 9’s
  • Members from the classes of 1971 and 1985 attended the program
  • General preservation workshop
  • Assistance identifying individuals, groups, and places in photographs digitized for the CLIR Grant project
  • Handouts were created for writing down identifying details
  • Omeka instance (digital exhibition) created to engage alumnae who were not able to attend program

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Crowdsourcing with Spelman Alumnae!

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Memory Work Amplifying the Voices of BIPOC Communities

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Holly Smith

College Archivist

Spelman College

hsmith12@spelman.edu