Indigenous Cataloging

Diana Vazquez�Knowledge Organization 653-02

What is Indigenous Cataloging?

What strategies are being implemented?

Xwi7xwa Library

• First academic Aboriginal branch in Canada
• Utilize an aboriginal classification system and subject headings specifically adapted for their indigenous community, inspired by BDCS.

Brian Deer Classification System

• Created by Kahnawake Mohawk librarian, A. Brian Deer whose development of classification systems aids the objectives of local Indigenous people and their perspectives.

Image source: Indigenous Knowledge Organization | Xwi7xwa Library. (n.d.). Retrieved April 26, 2021, from https://xwi7xwa.library.ubc.ca/collections/indigenous-knowledge-organization/

Controlled Vocabularies

Mashantucket Pequot Thesaurus Project

• Initiated as a response to inadequate terminology used by popular knowledge systems to catalogue Indigenous materials
• The project aims to “incorporate an Indigenous perspective into mainstream controlled vocabularies” through the creation of a thesaurus. (Littletree & Metoyer, 2015)

Māori Subject Heading Thesaurus

• In New Zealand, the Māori Subject Heading Thesaurus was developed and “designed to meet the information needs of Māori speakers and people from Māori communities” (Littletree & Metoyer, 2015).

Littletree, S., & Metoyer, C. A. (2015). Knowledge Organization from an Indigenous Perspective: The Mashantucket Pequot Thesaurus of American Indian Terminology Project. Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 53(5–6), 640–657. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639374.2015.1010113

TK Labels

• Traditional Knowledge Labels are digital tags introduced by Local Contexts, looking to restore authority to Indigenous communities in the digital landscape.
• Used for
• Indigenous communities seeking to inform others on the use and access of their Traditional Knowledge.
• Libraries, museums, and archives looking to attribute their collections appropriately.
• Developed in partnership with Indigenous communities in Canada, Australia, and the United States

Image Source: TK Labels – Local Contexts. (n.d.). Retrieved April 22, 2021,

from https://localcontexts.org/labels/traditional-knowledge-labels/

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Bibliography

• Doyle, A. M., Lawson, K., & Dupont, S. (2015). Indigenization of Knowledge Organization at the Xwi7xwa Library. (English). Journal of Library & Information Studies, 13(2), 107–134. https://doi.org/10.6182/jlis.2015.13(2).107
• Indigenous Knowledge Organization | Xwi7xwa Library. (n.d.). Retrieved April 26, 2021, from https://xwi7xwa.library.ubc.ca/collections/indigenous-knowledge-organization/
• Littletree, S., & Metoyer, C. A. (2015). Knowledge Organization from an Indigenous Perspective: The Mashantucket Pequot Thesaurus of American Indian Terminology Project. Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 53(5–6), 640–657. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639374.2015.1010113
• Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Indigenous. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved April 27, 2021, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/indigenous
• TK Labels – Local Contexts. (n.d.). Retrieved April 22, 2021, from https://localcontexts.org/labels/traditional-knowledge-labels/

Archiving Activism & Social Movements

Mariame Kaba�Knowledge Organization 653-02

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“How are archives and archivists documenting contemporary activist movements like #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo? ”

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Newberry Library

Online Inventory

Ephemeral materials collected at various protests and events surrounding the Chicago Black Lives Matter movement. Includes items that reflect the moment as a whole such as:

• Artwork And Signs
• Flyers
• Handbills
• Announcements Used Or Created For Particular Events
• Newspapers
• Pamphlets
• Zines
• Posters

Creator: Catherine Glass

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The expansive growth of social media and the extensive use of these platforms by activists have upended collecting and preservation practices of archivists and archives (Jackson et al. 2020).

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1. Who is this archive for?
2. Does the Newberry center a commitment to social justice and change?
3. How does the Newberry deal with describing its collections in finding aids? Is it examining its current and legacy language?
4. Has it revisited its collection development policies to make them more inclusive and representative? Does guiding documentation articulate a commitment to justice work and representational collecting?
5. Are they analyzing and addressing systemic barriers in their own archives? What reparative actions are being proposed and undertaken?
6. Are they hiring and supporting diverse staff?

Critical librarianship offers a framework through which we question our own biases--personal, institutional, and systemic -- with hopes that we can create more equitable and just outcomes in libraries, museums, archives and the world at large.

References

Drabinski, E. (2019) “What is critical about critical librarianship?” Art Libraries Journal, 44, Special Issue 2: Critical Art Librarianship, 49-57. https://doi.org/10.1017/alj.2019.3

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Hurst, A. (2016) “Why the Newberry Library is Collecting Black Lives Matter Artifacts.” Chicago Magazine, March 2. Online at: https://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/march-2016/newberry-library-civil-rights/. Accessed on April 20.

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Jackson, S, Bailey, M, & Foucault Welles, B. (2020) #Hashtag Activism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice. MIT Press.

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Posner, M. (2015) “What’s Next? The Radical, Unrealized Potential of the Digital Humanities.” Online at: http://miriamposner.com/blog/whats-next-the-radical-unrealized-potential-of-digital-humanities/ Accessed on April 20.

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References

Sellie, A., Goldstein, J., Fair, M., & Hoyer, J. (2015) “Interference Archive: a free space for social movement culture.” Archival Science, 15(4), 453–472. doi:10.1007/s10502-015-9245-5

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Walsh, C. (2020) “Challenge of archiving the #MeToo movement.” The Harvard Gazette, August 11. Online at: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/08/challenge-of-archiving-the-metoo-movement/ . Accessed May 1, 2021.

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Zinn, H. (1977) ‘‘Secrecy, Archives and the Public Interest.’’ The Midwestern Archivist 2, no. 2: 14-26

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Reparative Archives: Anti-Racist Description and Rejecting Black Historical Erasure

Melissa Nuber�Knowledge Organization 653-02

87.7% of Archivists Identify as White

- Society of American Archivists, 2017

Historical Handling of Black Lives in Archives :

• “Compilers of slave ship manifests participated in the transmutation of black flesh into integers and fractions. This alchemy, powerful in and of itself, meant displaying data alone could not and did not offer the atonement descendants of slaves sought or capture the inhumanity of this archive’s formation”

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• “Abolitionists generated content to provoke a hyperemotional response in readers—an excessive reproduction of black death and pain to overcompensate for a dense archive of enslaved integers generated across centuries.”

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- Jessica Marie Jones, P.HD. Markup Bodies

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Spotlight: The BLACKIVISTS

“We reject attempts to document this moment that fails to center the Black experience or that fails to document the facts about the State’s role in inflicting Black pain,” reads the open letter. “We commit to archival practices that support accountability and historical accuracy because when the dust settles attempts will be made to rewrite the history.”

-Stacie Williams, Blackivist & director of the Center for Digital Scholarship, UChicago Library, on the importance of community-based documenting of the BLM Movement, How will History Museums Remeber this Moment?

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The Blackivists with members of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party via https://www.theblackivists.com/services

Spotlight: Archives for Black Lives (a4bliP)-

“We have the privilege of choosing what goes into the historical record, we also bear the responsibility to safeguard accurate representations of contemporaneous events. We believe archives exist to hold power to account; to speak truth to power. Because records serve as evidence for factual claims, it is archivists’ responsibility, as stewards of records, to stand against their exploitation or abuse.”- A4BLIP’s Statement of Principles, 2017

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• Anti-Racist Description Resources for Archivists.

Spotlight: Kameelah Janan Rasheed

“There are all of these different ways that black folks have been archiving for centuries because we’ve been very much aware of the possibility of someone saying that we never existed.”- Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Fugitive Libraries

Kameelah Janan Rasheed, No Instructions for Assembly (Activation I), installation shot, 2013. [Kameelah Janan Rasheed] , https://placesjournal.org/article/fugitive-libraries/?cn-reloaded=1

The Role of Archivists as Activists-

“And so we must imagine a new country. Reparations—by which I mean the full acceptance of our collective biography and its consequences—is the price we must pay to see ourselves squarely”

Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Case for Reparations

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“Attempting to silence and erase the violent past is a direct assault on the unspoken oath of archivists and the institutions in which they reside”

La’el Hughes-Watkins, Moving Towards A Reparative Archive

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Melissa’s References-

Archives For Black Lives. (n.d.). Archives For Black Lives. Retrieved May 4, 2021, from

https://archivesforblacklives.wordpress.com/

Archivists, curators, & museum technicians | Data USA. (n.d.). Retrieved May 4, 2021,

from https://datausa.io/profile/soc/archivists-curators-museum-technicians

Ardr_final.pdf. (n.d.). Retrieved May 4, 2021, from

https://archivesforblacklives.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/ardr_final.pdf

Coates, T. (2016, June). The Case for Reparations. The Atlantic.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/

Drake, J. M. (2016). #ArchivesForBlackLives: Building a Community Archives of Police

Violence in Cleveland. Medium.Com, On Archivy. Published https://medium.com/on-archivy/archivesforblacklives-building-a-community-archives-of-police-violence-in-cleveland-93615d777289#.7yxm57i88

Hughes-Watkins, L. (2018). 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. 19.

Melissa’s References Ctd.

Johnson, J. M. (2018). Markup Bodies: Black (Life) Studies and Slavery (Death) Studies at the

Digital Crossroads. Social Text, 36(4 [137]), 57–79. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-7145658

Kameelah Janan Rasheed. (n.d.). Retrieved May 4, 2021, from https://kameelahr.com/

Magarrel L. “Reparations in Theory and Practice” (May 4, 2011), International Center for

Transitional Justice, https://www.ictj.org/publication/reparations-theory-and-practice.

Mattern, S. (2019). Fugitive Libraries. Places Journal. https://doi.org/10.22269/191022

Mission. (n.d.). The Blackivists. Retrieved May 4, 2021, from

https://www.theblackivists.com/our-mission

Moore, T. (2020, July 31). How Will History Museums Remember This Moment? Chicago

Magazine.https://www.chicagomag.com/arts-culture/july-2020/covid-19-protests-history-museums/

Robinson-Sweet, A. (2018). Truth and Reconciliation: Archivists as Reparations Activists.

The American Archivist, 81(1), 23–37. https://doi.org/10.17723/0360-9081-81.1.23

Society of American Archivists, Israel, R. H., & Eyre, J. R. (2017). The 2017 WArS/SAA Salary

Survey: Initial Results and Analysis. Eyre & Israel. https://www2.archivists.org/sites/all/files/WArS-SAA-Salary-Survey-Report.pdf

Sutherland, T. (2017). Archival Amnesty: In Search of Black American Transitional and

Restorative Justice. Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies, 1(2). https://doi.org/10.24242/jclis.v1i2.42

Describing Transgender Archives: A Community Based Approach

Elliott Hadwin

Knowledge Organization 653-02

What is archival description?

And what does it have to do with knowledge organization?

• “The process of creating a set of data representing an archival resource” [...]
• “Analyzing, organizing, and recording details about the formal elements of a record or collection of records” (SAA Dictionary: Description, n.d.).

• Closely intertwined with arrangement
• Transforms documents into archival records through recontextualizing the documents
• Links documents to each other within the collection, archive, and beyond

Issues with Terminology

Lack of standardized terminology.

Insufficient/inaccurate Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) (Baucom, 2018).

Frequent changes to terminology, including high usage of slang/localized terms (Baucom, 2018).

Potential harm of using outdated, inaccurate, offensive terminology, including contested terms, anachronistic terms, terms that are illegible across cultural contexts, or terms that impose identities on people/communities (Baucom, 2018; Raddatz, 2017).

Community Based Solutions

Creating subject guides alongside community members (Baucom, 2018).

Providing forums to submit additional information/corrections to descriptions (Bäk et al., 2019; Baucom, 2018).

Conducting in-depth donor interviews. (Baucom, 2018)

Screenshot of Library and Archive Canada: https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/CollectionSearch/Pages/record.aspx?app=fonandcol&IdNumber=3607002

Community Based

Solutions

Involving community members to develop keywords (Bäk et al., 2019) or using alternative thesauri like Homosaurus.

Screenshot from: https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/

Offering users “related terms” instead of (or in addition to) subject headings (Baucom, 2018).

Building intergenerational engagement (Zavala et al., 2017).

Issues with current descriptive practices prevent the creation of data that would effectively contextualize materials and create relationships between them, limiting access.

Community-based approaches to archival description could lead to more accurate organization and therefore better access to transgender history.

Works Cited

Bäk, G., Allard, D., & Ferris, S. (2019). Knowledge organization as knowledge creation:

Surfacing community participation in archival arrangement and description.

Knowledge Organization, 46(7), 502–521.

https://doi.org/10.5771/0943-7444-2019-7-502

Baucom, E. (2018). An Exploration into Archival Descriptions of LGBTQ Materials. The

American Archivist, 81(1), 65–83. https://doi.org/10.17723/0360-9081-81.1.65

Raddatz, E. (2017, December 4). The Digital Transgender Archive. Choice 360.

https://www.choice360.org/feature/the-digital-transgender-archive/

Zavala, J., Migoni, A. A., Caswell, M., Geraci, N., & Cifor, M. (2017). ‘A process where we’re

all at the table’: Community archives challenging dominant modes of archival

practice. Archives and Manuscripts, 45(3), 202–215.

https://doi.org/10.1080/01576895.2017.1377088