Library assistant Jade Darling, left, and volunteer Sue Childress process a collection in the Kiplinger Research Library. One task is to write a description for the library catalog using established vocabularies.
We continue to examine how the Historical Society, founded in 1894, has contributed over time to injustices that African Americans and people of color face every day. We have found that we need to change how we collect, describe, and provide access to the materials we hold in trust for the public.
Prioritizing Anti-racist Description
With a renewed sense of urgency, we are auditing catalog records and finding aids (guides to processed collections that help the public understand their contents) to address and correct institutional bias and racist language.
The Historical Society committed to describing unprocessed collections (not ready for researchers) relating to Black Washington and adding those descriptions to the online catalog. (The Historical Society has a large backlog of unprocessed collections of all types.) However, not only do new descriptions need to use acceptable language, but the terms used in existing descriptions need to be corrected as well.
Our on-going cataloging process is grounded in the professional concept of critical librarianship, specifically in addressing ethical aspects and determining inclusive description policies and strategies. (The Chicago History Museum, for instance, recently offered a great post exploring how this approach can be implemented with local history collections.) The Historical Society staff, interns, and volunteers, are taking these steps based on the guidance of the Blackivists and the Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia’s Anti-Racist Description Working Group.
For some collections, a simple catalog record—including title, creator, dates, and subject/search terms—provides enough information about the collection and its context. For most archival collections, however, a finding aid provides much more necessary detail. In either case, terms used to describe the items were often pulled from vocabularies and subject headings that reflected what we now consider the outdated thinking of those who wrote them (such as the use of the term “Illegal alien”).
The Alexander Taverns papers (MS 0244) includes this invitation to a “sitting party,” a fundraiser to aid an enslaved person’s ability to buy their own freedom. Funds raised at this 1846 event went to purchase the freedom of E.H. Bell, Taverns’s enslaved sister. We are examining catalog descriptions related to African Americans and slavery to aid researchers and to ensure that the terms used do not inflict further harm.
Often outdated terms fit into a category of “other,” as in separate from the (white) norm. For example, as it stands right now, the description of a set of papers from an African American family in DC would have a subject heading specifying the family’s race. A set of papers from a white family, however, wouldn’t identify the family as white. That difference in cataloging—calling out the race of one family but not the other—aids in the discovery of papers relating to African Americans (a positive), but at the significant expense of indicating that white is the norm, and African American the outlier (clearly, a negative).
The Historical Society will break with cataloging tradition where that tradition is recognized as harmful. We will address and correct racist description in older listings, while updating our current processing manuals. Although collections items themselves will not be altered or removed, even when they contain offensive content, the language chosen to describe the items will reflect a more empathetic, inclusive approach.
Correcting language in thousands of records takes time. It is far from all that needs to be done. However, it is a critical step toward improving access to and equity surrounding the collections we hold. We welcome constructive feedback on this process and commitment; please contact collections@dc-history-old.local with any questions or comments.
The Historical Society of Washington, D.C. declared that it stands in solidarity with those demanding political change and meaningful reform to address the institutional racism and pervasive injustices that African Americans especially face every day.