As archival and library professionals, we will conduct this audit with the following understandings and assumptions:

• we recognize that there is a legacy of structural racism—and other systems of power, such as heteronormativity, misogyny, sexism, and ableism—that has permeated out society, institutions, and professional practices
• we actively seek ways to identify and work through our biases to help dismantle racism at the structural, institutional, interpersonal, and individual levels
• we need to reconceptualize traditional archival concepts (e.g., neutrality, provenance, discovery, record, evidence)
• we are accountable for the description of materials we collect and make accessible to the public
• we believe the public is accountable for providing suggestions on archival descriptions we can improve upon
• we understand the importance of educating ourselves and others
• we must continually think of new outreach and advocacy approaches to foment a legacy of trust around our archives
• we anticipate feelings of discomfort, which should not let that compromise the accuracy of our descriptions
• we acknowledge that language is powerful and inseparable from how we view and engage with our society
• we acknowledge that archival description, just like language, is an iterative and imperfect process.
• advancing diversity, equity, and inclusiveness requires participatory and collaborative efforts
• our policies, procedures, and practices will continue evolving as we receive feedback and suggestions for improvement from our stakeholders

To ground our DEI auditing efforts, we intend to frame our work by gathering and reviewing scholarly articles, user cases, manuals, procedures, and workflows that address anti-racist and anti-oppressive practices. Drawing from the varied range of archival and DEI concepts, critical theories (e.g., intersectionality), and archival frameworks (e.g., cultural humility), we can guide participants through their reparative description efforts and involve our FU community. Among the sources to be used as references: FU Strategic Diversity Plan, FUL Strategic Plan, Anti-Racist Archival Practices, and DACS’ Principles of Archival Description. Participants have access to shared readings that can inform us as we complete tasks at different stages.

It is important to build a common understanding of the terms our team will be using throughout the auditing process. Developing working definitions, as they relate to DEI, accessibility, and archival practices, can be an effective way to work collaboratively and productively with terms used in ways they are understood and interpreted.

 

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility

Archival Concepts

1. Ableism – Discrimination or oppression against individuals based on a person's physical appearance, mental health conditions, and cognitive differences.
2. Anti-Racism - a system of ongoing practices that identifies and understands racist policies, practices, and procedures and replaces them with policies, practices, and procedures to fight against the system of racism and improve outcomes for all.[1]
3. Arrangement the process of organizing materials with respect to their provenance and original order, to protect their context and to achieve physical or intellectual control over the materials
4. Diversity - is the full range of human differences as experienced by groups and individuals that can be engaged in the service of learning. This includes differences in race, ethnicity, gender identity and expression, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, citizenship status, disability, religion, world view, age, and many others[2].
5. Inclusion - exists when traditionally marginalized individuals and groups feel a sense of belonging and are empowered to participate in campus culture as full and valued members of the community who are shaping and redefining that culture in a variety of ways. Inclusion recognizes the dignity and worth of all people and strives to ensure that individuals and groups are welcomed, valued, and advocated for[3].
6. Cultural Humility – the ability to maintain an interpersonal stance that is other-oriented (or open to the other) in relation to aspects of cultural identity that are most important to the [person].[4] It is a continuous and self-reflective process of acknowledging and examining one’s unintentional and intentional biases.[5]
7. Digital Accessibility – is the practice of authoring digital documents in a way that doesn't create barriers to access.[6]
8. Disability – "… is an evolving concept…that…results from the interaction between persons with impairments and attitudinal and environmental barriers that hinders their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others".[7]
9. Equity - refers to the process of creating opportunities for historically underrepresented and underserved populations that encourage equal access in the pursuit of equitable outcomes. Explicit in this process is an effort to end systematic discrimination against people based on their identities and backgrounds[8].
10. Intersectionality – the complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination (such as racism, sexism, and classism) combine, overlap, or intersect especially in the experiences of marginalized individuals or groups.[8] As a social construct and theory presented by Crenshaw, intersectionality has been used to as a set of lenses to observe and analyze power imbalances and the ways in which categories of race, gender, and class can be understood as overlapping and having interdependent effect on each other.[9]
11. Underrepresented – These represent groups that, relative to their demographic presence in the population, are under-described, silenced, or have lower engagement rates in participatory archival description. Underrepresented groups include but are not limited to people of color; first-generation; low-income; LGBTQ+; undocumented students; veterans; individuals with disabilities and minoritized religious/spiritual/humanist communities.[10]
12. Audit- An independent review and examination of records and activities to test for compliance with established policies or standards, often with recommendations for changes in controls or procedures.[11]
13. Description - a set of data crafted to identify and represent an archival resource or component thereof. The process of creating a set of data representing an archival resource or component thereof.[12]
14. Digital collection - A digital collection is a logical grouping of related digital content that is organized by collection-level metadata. All digital content items (digitized and born digital) are capable of existing within a digital collection.[13]
15. Digital content - Digital content is a discrete unit of information in digital form that is treated as a logical entity with properties and associated metadata. Digitized and born digital items may both considered as digital content.[14]
16. Digital object - a unit of information that includes properties (attributes or characteristics of the object) and may also include methods (means of performing operations on the object).[15]
17. Finding aid - a description that typically consists of contextual and structural information about an archival resource.[16]
18. Item - A thing that can be distinguished from a group and that is complete in itself.[17]
19. Neutrality - A professional illusion or myth that archival professionals are impartial agents who remain objective as they describe historical records. This Eurocentric notion of objectivity has led to the exclusion of historical voices from marginalized communities and to the perpetuation of systems of oppression.
20. Radical collaboration – coming together, across disparate, but engaged domains in ways that are often unfamiliar, or possibly uncomfortable, to achieve more together than we could separately.[18]
21. Legacy Finding AidADD DEFINITION HERE
22. Provenance the origin or source of a collection that identifies the creator(s), helps determine ownership, establishes systems to maintain chain of custody, and ensures authenticity of the records.
23. Record - data or information stored on a medium and used as an extension of human memory or to support accountability.[19]

[1] Definition modified from Carter, J., & Snyder, I. (2020). What Does It Mean to Be an Anti-racist? National League of Cities. https://www.nlc.org/article/2020/07/21/what-does-it-mean-to-be-an-anti-racist/

[2] Direct quote from FUL Strategic Plan, forthcoming.

[3] Direct quote from FUL Strategic Plan, forthcoming.

[4]Direct definition from Hook, J. N., Davis, D. E., Owen, J., Worthington Jr, E. L., & Utsey, S. O. (2013). Cultural humility: Measuring openness to culturally diverse clients. Journal of counseling psychology, 60(3), 353.

[5] Tai, J. (2020). Cultural Humility as a Framework for Anti-Oppressive Archival Description. Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies, 3(2), 1-23.

[6] Definition adapted from World Wide Web Consortium. Introduction to Web Accessibility. https://www.w3.org/WAI/fundamentals/accessibility-intro/#what

[7] Direct definition from United Nations. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-on-the-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities.html

[8]Direct quote from FUL Strategic Plan, forthcoming.

[9] Direct definition from Merriam-Webster: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intersectionality

[10] Definition modified from Furman University.Strategic Diversity Plan. Chief Diversity Officer. https://www.furman.edu/diversity-equity-inclusion/chief-diversity-officer/strategic-diversity-plan/

[11] Exact definition from SAA Dictionary of Archives Terminology: https://dictionary.archivists.org/

[12] Exact definition from Society of American Archivists.SAA Dictionary of Archives Terminology: https://dictionary.archivists.org/

[13] Exact definition from Library of Congress. Glossary | About This Program | Digital Collections Management | Programs | Library of Congress. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. https://www.loc.gov/programs/digital-collections-management/about-this-program/glossary/

[14] Exact definition from Society of American Archivists.SAA Dictionary of Archives Terminology: https://dictionary.archivists.org/

[15] Exact definition from Society of American Archivists.SAA Dictionary of Archives Terminology: https://dictionary.archivists.org/

[16] Exact definition from Society of American Archivists.SAA Dictionary of Archives Terminology: https://dictionary.archivists.org/

[17] Exact definition from Society of American Archivists.SAA Dictionary of Archives Terminology: https://dictionary.archivists.org/

[15] Exact definition from Nancy Y. McGovern. “Radical Collaboration and Research Data Management: An Introduction.” Research Library Issues, no. 296 (2018): 6–22. https://doi.org/10.29242/rli.296.2.