Presentation Type
Presentation
Start Date
10-9-2020 10:10 AM
Abstract
Equal access to information for all users and recognition of the ongoing need to increase awareness of and responsiveness to the diversity of the communities we serve, is crucial to the library profession. As archivists, catalogers and metadata librarians, we are taught to strive for unbiased description of library materials and in doing so these professionals inevitable apply their own partiality and preconceptions. Recent social events have highlighted the importance of how archivists, catalogers, and metadata librarians create Finding Aids and catalog records. We created many of our finding aids and catalog records long time ago, and what is considered a correct description changes with context, time, and the position of the collection’s creator. This presentation will analyze recommendations for creating anti-harmful archival description and catalog records. In addition, we will examine library standards, schemas and tools that may necessarily be limited by the subjective nature of classification and organization.
The road to inclusive description of library materials
Equal access to information for all users and recognition of the ongoing need to increase awareness of and responsiveness to the diversity of the communities we serve, is crucial to the library profession. As archivists, catalogers and metadata librarians, we are taught to strive for unbiased description of library materials and in doing so these professionals inevitable apply their own partiality and preconceptions. Recent social events have highlighted the importance of how archivists, catalogers, and metadata librarians create Finding Aids and catalog records. We created many of our finding aids and catalog records long time ago, and what is considered a correct description changes with context, time, and the position of the collection’s creator. This presentation will analyze recommendations for creating anti-harmful archival description and catalog records. In addition, we will examine library standards, schemas and tools that may necessarily be limited by the subjective nature of classification and organization.