OSU library exhibit documents archivists’ anti-racist description work

By Molly Rosbach on Oct. 15, 2024
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Archivist poses with exhibit panels detailing the archives' anti-racist description work.

Natalia Fernández poses with SCARC's new exhibit in the fifth floor of the Valley Library.

A new exhibit at the Valley Library provides insight into how Oregon State University archivists are engaging proactively in anti-racist work on historical collections. 

The “Anti-Racist Description Activities in the OSU Special Collections and Archives Research Center” exhibit is located in the foyer of SCARC on the fifth floor of the Valley Library. Display panels highlight three main areas of work: engaging in reparative description; acknowledging harmful content; and enhancing description. 

As language evolves and more voices are included in the telling of history, archives need continuous upkeep to provide as complete and accurate a picture as possible, said Natalia Fernández, associate professor and curator of the Oregon Multicultural Archives and OSU Queer Archives. 

“We thought this would be a really interesting exhibit because it gives that behind-the-scenes of the work that we do,” Fernández said. “Anti-racist actions in terms of archival description are just one piece of the anti-racist actions that SCARC does. We are engaging in thinking about social justice and anti-racist work across all our work.” 

The work archivists are doing does not alter the original source materials, but instead expands and updates the descriptions and search terms that scholars see when they use those materials for research. 

“We’re not removing content; we’re still providing access to it. It’s more how we frame it, how we contextualize it,” Fernández said. “Archivists love context. That’s very in line with what we do.” 

Every step of collecting and organizing archival records involves deliberate choices, she said: which materials are preserved in the first place, which materials to include in a collection, which collections to accept or highlight, how those materials are categorized and whether they are made accessible to the public or online. Providing additional information beyond what the original content creators may have included is an opportunity to better place these records within the historical context and account for potential biases or outright bigotry.

SCARC has been engaging in anti-racist archival description work for many years, but it wasn’t until 2020 that the department came together as a unit on that work, Fernández said. 

In May, OSU archivists presented on this topic at the regional Northwest Archivists conference to share their progress with other universities and repositories. This presentation led to the creation of the exhibit now on display, which is open to the public 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Friday.

Also included in the panels are QR codes linking to blog posts that go more in depth about each aspect mentioned in the exhibit.

Reparative description

One instance of reparative description is the replacement of the term “internment” with “incarceration” in reference to Japanese and Japanese American communities during World War II. Descriptions on related archival collections were altered to include notes about the updated word, which more accurately represents those communities’ experiences and aligns with their preferred terms.

Acknowledging harmful content

Acknowledging harmful content is similar to placing content warnings at the top of an article or before a video is shown. These statements tell researchers that a collection contains difficult or triggering materials, such as racial slurs. 

For example, before accessing the DisArchives, a research guide that highlights collections related to disability, readers will see a statement that some materials in that collection contain discussion of eugenics and use of a derogatory term for people with disabilities. 

At least 29 archival collections include a slur used against Indigenous women and often used in place names, and another 23 resources include a slur against African Americans. Archivists have added statements both at the collection level and to individual materials acknowledging the racism behind these words and the personal and community-wide trauma associated with them. 

Enhancing description

The third element of the work, enhancing description, is aimed at making it easier for researchers to find materials on underrepresented groups in the archives. 

In 2023, a graduate student researching Indigenous communities in Mexico pointed out the need for more information highlighting the presence of documents about Mexican, Zapotec, Mixtec and Triqui communities within a specific collection. Archivists worked to enhance the collection’s description with more keywords so future researchers can more easily find those related documents. 

A project currently in progress will highlight multicultural Greek-letter organizations at OSU that are documented in archival collection finding aids and add more information about those particular chapters and their legacy at OSU.