Practical Approaches to Reparative Description: A Workshop Series with Wide Appeal
In Spring 2024, DPLA’s Metadata Working Group and Rights Statements Working Group produced Practical Approaches to Reparative Description, a workshop series designed for people working with cultural heritage data looking to deepen their understanding and practice of reparative description. Reparative description focuses on remediating or contextualizing potentially outdated or harmful language used in descriptive practices, ensuring accuracy and inclusivity (definition derived from Yale’s Reparative Archival Description).
The series was very well received, with each workshop averaging 600 registrants and 300 live views. The recording of each workshop is linked below.
The Working Groups sincerely thank all of the presenters for sharing their stories and their projects. This series could not have happened without their help.
Representations of Gender and Sexuality in Metadata
Description
Capturing information about gender and sexuality in descriptive metadata often surfaces questions and unique considerations about how to effectively maximize exposure of diverse collections without mislabeling or putting members of vulnerable communities at increased risk. Presenters shared a variety of perspectives on strategies for how to approach the capture of this information, as well as how to implement existing resources to help enhance collection metadata.
Presenters
- Ann Lally, University of Washington
- Bri Watson, University of British Columbia
- Michael L. Stewart, University of Delaware
Resources
- Ann Lally’s slides (PDF)
- Bri Watson’s slides (PPTX)
- Michael L. Stewart’s slides (PPTX)
Local Contexts: Tools for Supporting Indigenous Rights and Interests in Collections
Description
Every Indigenous community has cultural and biological knowledge within educational systems, archives, libraries, and museums that they do not own, do not control, and cannot govern circulation over. Local Contexts is a global nonprofit organization that was founded to address the needs of Indigenous communities and local organizations who wanted a practical method to deal with the range of intellectual property issues that arise in relation to managing cultural heritage materials. The Local Contexts Traditional Knowledge and Biocultural Labels and Notices are tools for Indigenous communities and collections- and research-based institutions to support Indigenous cultural authority and data sovereignty. In this webinar, hosted by the DPLA Rights Statements Working Group, the Local Contexts team introduced the Labels and Notices and how they can be used to support Indigenous rights and interests in collections and data.
Presenters
- Dr. Stephany RunningHawk Johnson, Local Contexts
- Corrie Roe, Local Contexts
- Emily Santhanam, Local Contexts
Resources
- Presentation slides (Google Drive)
- Local Contexts website — contact information, the Local Contexts short films, more about Labels and Notices, and examples of their use.
- Local Contexts Working Groups and Network interest form — see in particular the new Library Working Group.
- Info sessions & Hub demos — monthly group sessions with the Local Contexts team, great to share with interested colleagues.
Special Projects in Reparative & Inclusive Description
Description
In this final workshop of the series, presenters shared how they approached description projects for special collections at their universities. Projects included: reparative description for Nazi publications identified in the collection, expanding access to electronic agricultural extension reports through non-English language subject headings, and applying content statements and strategies for graphic images/thumbnails.
Presenters
- Julie Moore, California State University, Fresno
- Vance Woods, Oregon State University
- Devon Murphy, University of Texas at Austin
- Karina Sánchez, University of Texas at Austin
Resources
- Julie Moore’s slides (PDF)
- Vance Woods’ slides (PDF)
- Karina Sánchez and Devon Murphy’s slides (PDF)