Document Type

Presentation

Abstract

As archivists concede that neutrality is impossible and non-action itself constitutes action, it follows that to treat reasonably offensive records as any other record is to apply an interpretation that they are innocuous, unremarkable, and uncontroversial. Archivists may perceive the stakes of describing these materials as particularly high, but they lack a comprehensive set of descriptive strategies to apply to these records. As a result, existing practices are likely to be local or ad hoc. This research aims to identify and explore descriptive strategies archivists use which serve to construct (or concede) the meaning that certain historical materials are potentially offensive using a combination of literature review, evaluation of finding aids and descriptive metadata, and exploratory interviews with archivists and other memory institution professionals.

Disciplines

Archival Science

Comments

This poster was presented at the Michigan Archival Association's annual meeting on June 17, 2024. It was adapted from the paper Minadeo, Leah, "Arbiters of Ugliness: A Review of Strategies for Describing Offensive Archival Materials" (2024). School of Information Sciences Student Scholarship. 3. https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/sis_student_papers/3

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