OU - Theses

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/11244/23528

Browse

Browsing OU - Theses by Degree Discipline "Master of Library and Information Studies"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Apparitional representations: disability history, reparative descriptions, and ethical failings in a special research collection
    (2024-05-10) Weiss, Melissa; Rubenstein, Ellen; Abbas, June; Reese, Jackie
    Reparative description is a trend in archival scholarship that seeks to address past harms caused by archives that misrepresented and silenced historically marginalized communities in their collections. Identifying and better representing disability history in archives is a part of this trend with many archivists publishing either theoretical approaches or reparative description work that focus mostly on the end product. Few published works, whether a blog post or academic article, consider the challenges and potential failures of remediating descriptions in archives that do not have collections focused on disability history. For archives, such as the Western History Collections, disability history is a miniscule part of its collections, adding to the already difficult process of remediating descriptions. In this thesis, I outline my process for remediating descriptions using a variety of theories from archival, trauma, feminist, and disability studies in order to illustrate the professional and ethical challenges of crafting adequate descriptions that better represent the disabled subject in the Western History Collections. Using ghosts and haunting as a foundation for approaching reparative description work at a special collection that never focused on disability history, I consider the realities of bringing historically marginalized disabled persons to the forefront of archival descriptions while highlighting the importance of making the invisible work of remediation in archives visible.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Preliminary survey of the information preservation needs of the marine conservation community
    (2023-05-12) Carolyn, Scearce; Abbas, June; Magruder, Kerry; Rubenstein, Ellen
    Observations of environmental degradation, ecosystem change, fisheries collapses, and biodiversity loss have raised concerns over our ability to preserve marine communities. Knowledge plays a key role in any attempt to preserve these ecosystems. However, the basic natural history knowledge necessary to understand these systems has also degraded as the discipline of ecology has evolved in response to technological pressure and changing funding priorities within science. To make matters worse significant species losses occurred before many ecosystems were monitored making it difficult to determine the nature of undisturbed systems. This thesis analyzes the data currently being produced by the marine ecologists and conservationists in order to describe to librarians and information scientists what efforts can be taken to preserve data critical for ongoing conservation efforts. Description of data generated for the purposes of aquatic ecology was obtained through a domain analysis of the journal Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems. Three years of data generation was recorded for all full-length research articles published between 2016-2018. The data is heterogeneous; however, important trends were uncovered. There is a large amount of geographic data being produced within the context of determining biodiversity. Physical sampling of the environment means that adequate data preservation requires museum resources play a part in preserving specimens. Accessibility of data will determine its utility to ongoing studies, and online resources can easily facilitate needed accessibility.