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University of Maryland Statement of Harmful Language in Catalog Records
List of Library Actions/Strategies for Providing Ethical and Inclusive Metadata (optional)
Convey what the library is doing to address harmful language. If you have strategies for mitigating the use of offensive language in library metadata and/or creating library metadata that is ethical and inclusive, consider including those as part of the Ethical and Inclusive Language Statement or directing the user to a public statement of those strategies. List actions and/or describe projects to remediate and/or contextualize potentially outdated or harmful language in library metadata and to create library metadata that is accurate and inclusive.
Examples:
Duke University Libraries Collections & Services Statement on Inclusive Description
Yale Library Reparative Archival Description Working Group: Home
University of Central Oklahoma Inclusive Metadata Strategies
Date of creation/last update
Inclusive language statements should include the date of creation and, when applicable, the date of the most recent update.
Examples:
This statement … was last updated on 2021-08-11.
Drafted: March 2024
Updated: April 2024
University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library Statement on Language in Archival Description
SCRC GeorgSCRC 2018.04
Last Updated: 10/10/2018
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Acknowledge the contribution of original authors when your statement was created in consultation with inclusive language statements from other institutions with an attribution, including links.
Examples:
This statement has been adapted and expanded from that of Emory University Libraries, Rose Library, and others from this list of statements on bias in library and archives description.
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Invite users to ask questions and provide comments. Welcoming feedback acknowledges the iterative process for improving both descriptive practices as well as clarity and understanding of the inclusive language statement. Such an invitation helps demonstrate library's commitment to an inclusive user experience. Offer one or more channels through which users can provide feedback, or combine the feedback invitation with a mechanism for reporting problematic metadata as described above.
Examples:
UCLA Library welcomes your questions and invites your comments while we improve our descriptive practices. Please use our feedback form (opens in a new tab) to let us know...
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It may be helpful to your users to include a list of references for your institution’s inclusive language in library metadata statement. The references can provide further context for the work your library is pursuing in reducing harmful language from your metadata and emphasize the challenges of this work within a collaborative metadata environment, while keeping your statement brief and direct.
Examples:
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
For library and archives professionals interested in doing similar work, we encourage you to read the annotated bibliography found in the Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia’s “Anti-Racist Description Resources,” linked below. This resource focuses on race and racism in archival collection descriptions, but the bibliography covers many related issues of representation in the archives. (Drexel University Libraries' Statement on Harmful Content in Archival Collections)
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