New approach to providing information on inclusive cataloguing from the Inclusive cataloguing group, ARA Diversity and Inclusion Allies
This guest blog by Victoria Cranna is the first in a series from the Inclusive Cataloguing Group.
The Inclusive Cataloguing Group is one of three special interest groups in the ARA Diversity and Inclusion Allies. The allies are a group volunteers who organise around the principles of improving diversity and inclusion across ARA and the wider record-keeping community. All allies are welcome to join this group, as well as the other two groups: Accessibility and Approaching Marginalised Communities.
When the group was started, its main activity was to create guidance or a toolkit on inclusive cataloguing. This was requested by the ARA Board and also through anecdotal feedback from the archives community.
There were discussions on the best way to develop guidance including using a consultant. The consultant model has been used successfully by other archive groups, however we realised that no-one is really an expert in this area so it would be difficult to find a consultant to do this work.
We discussed developing this within the group but kept getting stuck on the usual issues of resource and workload of the volunteers. As a way to progress this idea, Victoria Cranna undertook a brief survey of archive toolkits, guidance and resources on inclusive cataloguing which she has found useful in her work at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. This identified some great resources which we didn’t want to replicate in a new toolkit. These resources will be shared in a future blog.
It became apparent during our regular meetings, that we all approached inclusive cataloguing in different ways due to a number of factors including institutional buy-in, collection strengths, subject area expertise and team resource. As we realised the breadth of inclusive cataloguing, we started to feel overwhelmed and questioned whether we could create useful guidance and keep it up to date when we are not experts but all have certain areas of expertise depending on where we are working and our interests in this area.
It was decided that rather than create guidance that cannot possibly cover all areas of inclusive cataloguing, we will write blog posts based on our own experience of making our catalogues more inclusive. We will also ask for contributions from colleagues in other institutions that are working on inclusive cataloguing. These blogs will build up to become a set of guidance documents for the profession, they can easily be updated and will be accessible on the ARA website.
Sone of the topics coming up over the next few months will include:
Useful resources on inclusive cataloguing
Updating former colonial country names and cities
Traces of South Asia – a project to surface LSE collections on South Asia
Positive and negative effects of content warnings
Inclusive cataloguing at the Historic England Archive
Terminology in HIV and AIDS collections
Creating balanced administrative histories in catalogues
If you would like to contribute or if there is a subject that you would like to see covered, please get in touch via diversityandinclusion@archives.org.uk