UCO - Metadata Justice in Oklahoma Libraries & Archives Symposium Proceedings

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/11244/336455

The Metadata Justice in Oklahoma Libraries & Archives Symposium is a space for librarians, catalogers, archivists, and anyone interested in inclusive metadata to share their ideas and build a support network for this important work in our state's libraries and archives.

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Open Access
2024 Proceedings of the Metadata Justice in Oklahoma Libraries & Archives Symposium
Beezley, Shay; Hoffner, Bailey; Witzig, Katherine; Masood, Sana; Scheele-Clark, Heather; Dodd, James; Long, Misty; Sump-Crethar, Anna Nicole
Open Access
Unveiling Hidden Stories: Interactive Digital Humanities Resources Empower Research on Underrepresented Communities
(2024-06-13) Macken, Megan; Mautino, Sara; Hunt, Amy
In three case studies, we show how the transformation from a static bibliography to an interactive digital humanities resource connects student researchers to the cultural heritage of often overlooked communities, including Indigenous artists and Indigenous architects and architecture. In addition to modernizing pre-existing metadata on Indigenous artists and the built environment of Oklahoma, we created an entirely new bibliography dedicated to the under-represented field of Indigenous Architecture of Oklahoma. These case studies show how unearthing and enhancing existing resources can help researchers develop new narratives about the history and culture of Oklahoma.
Open Access
Creating Occult Identities and Subjects, or, How New NACO and SACO Funnels will Improve Access to Occult Resources
(6/13/2024) Frost, Guy; Breidenbaugh, Margaret
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) and authorities for names, covens, groups, organizations, and especially practitioners of New Religious Movements are lacking. Many of the existing LCSH terms omit scope notes, opening them up to being misassigned to cataloging records. In addition, many practitioners of these movements may be misassociated with the existing terms or unsatisfied with how their creative works have been labeled. Much of this conundrum lies with a lack of knowledge of the subject, but another issue may stem from prejudice. In early 2024, three people met online to consider addressing this problem with the aim of forming an Occult SACO Funnel and a separate Occult NACO Funnel. Learn about the mission, vision, and immediate plans of this exciting project, including how to get involved.
Open Access
Reparative Analysis of OOHRP's Oklahoma and OSU Diverse Sexuality and Gender Collections
(6/13/2024) Davis, Katanna; Daglaris, Patrick
This presentation will focus on two Oklahoma Oral History Research Program collections, the Oklahoma and OSU Diverse Sexuality and Gender collections. As the OOHRP Digital Curation GRA, I will discuss my process of using controlled vs. homegrown vocabularies, more specifically the Library of Congress Subject Headings and FAST and the alternative vocabulary of the Homosaurus. I will go into discussion of how I approach, and what it looks like, creating metadata for these collections, along with the description writing process for these oral histories. There will also be a more broad discussion of reparative practices regarding 2SLGBTQIA+ oral histories and oral history collections.
Open Access
Searching the Past, Finding the Present: Identifying Contemporary Tribal Communities in Gilcrease Museum's Rare Books Collection
(6/13/2024) Gowan, Jana; Smith, William; Pokross, Ben
Gilcrease Museum staff and scholars embarked on a multi-year project in 2023-2024 to research, identify, and catalog Native American Tribal affiliations within Gilcrease’s rare book collection. The Helmerich Center for American Research (HCAR) houses approximately 4,000 rare books from the Gilcrease Museum. First collected by Thomas Gilcrease (Muscogee Citizen) in the mid-20th century, the collection tells the hemispheric story of the Americas from 1494 to the mid-1900s. A small team at HCAR, including Dr. William (Billy) Smith, Associate Director, Dr. Benjamin Pokross, Duane H. King Post Doctoral Fellow, and Jana Gowan, Reference and Outreach Librarian, began surveying, researching, and documenting the presence of tribal communities and Indigenous creators in the museum’s rare book collection in order to create more accurate and culturally sensitive catalog records while also increasing accessibility to and understanding of the Gilcrease collections. This presentation will provide a general overview of the project design and progress to date and specifically feature the use of the Tribal Nations in Oklahoma Metadata database in support of the project, while also inviting input from the cataloging community.
Open Access
The Limits of Repair: The Case for and Boundaries of Reparative Description
(6/13/2024) Searcy, Rachel; Stephan, Weatherly
This presentation will discuss a group reparative description project undertaken on an assembled archival collection held by New York University Libraries Special Collections that consists of documents concerning enslavement in Spanish-colonized Cuba. Years after its acquisition and accessioning, the Archival Collections Management (ACM) department undertook collaborative reparative description on the collection, applying the recommendations of the Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia’s Anti-Racist Description Resources. The presentation will discuss the project design and outcomes, as well as larger reflections on the individual, institutional, and systemic challenges encountered and the limitations on archival re-description alone in the service of anti-racism and anti-oppressive.
Open Access
Multilingual Metadata: The Pan-American Authorities Initiative for Spanish Subject Headings
(6/13/2024) Murphy, Devon; Echeguren, Rose
In 2020, a group of library information science specialists at the University of Florida Libraries (UF) formed the Pan-American Authorities (PANA) group, a bilingual (English/Spanish) metadata working group dedicated to standardizing the creation of Spanish-language metadata to improve discoverability and access to digital collection materials published in Spanish. Recognizing our growing non-English collections, we found it important to address biases in North American cataloging and metadata practices, changing them to be more inclusive and representative of materials in our collections, their creators, and their users. However, the primary challenge was finding reliable authority files for assigning Spanish metadata that captured national and regional variations of the Spanish language. Prior to the formation of PANA, UF’s bilingual metadata specialist's primary resource for assigning Spanish metadata was lcsh-es.org, a bilingual English-Spanish database that aggregates six Spanish language authority files. While the convenience of accessing Spanish subject headings through a centralized platform was invaluable, over-reliance on this resource was problematic, notably because the authority files aggregated in lcsh-es.org predominantly originate from Europe or the United States. To address this, the PANA group began establishing a workflow that would allow for Latin American authority files to be utilized. Since its origin, the group has partnered with the University of Texas Austin Libraries, who have adapted the workflow to increase their Spanish metadata translation across several digital collections sites, representing materials from across Latin America, fostering greater accessibility for its users throughout the region. Collectively, the PANA group has successfully contributed approximately 700 terms to this resource, ranging from human rights themed-subject terms to genre forms. Currently, we are constructing a publicly accessible website, and the Pan-American Authorities (code: pana) is now an officially recognized subject heading source code by the Library of Congress.
Open Access
Metadata Justice: Inclusive Description Through a Critical Lens
(6/13/2024) Perera, Treshani
Treshani Perera gave the keynote for the 2024 Metadata Justice in Oklahoma Libraries & Archives Symposium where she called for continual critical engagement in library work, both in assessing the language, systems, and metadata we use and create, as well as the need for critically assessing inclusivity, representation, and bias in library work more broadly
Open Access
Inclusive Metadata through bibliographic control
(6/13/2024) McGhee, Devin; Bryson, Kirsten
As the Metropolitan Library System was implementing Aspen, an open-source discovery system, we decided to complete our first authority and bibliographic control project. An RFP was written, and two vendors responded with quotes. Backstage was chosen as the vendor, and we started the process in August 2023. A major focus of this project was to move from homegrown genre headings to Library of Congress genre headings. As we were working to update all our records to current cataloging standards, we also made inclusive metadata a top focus. Backstage provided headings from Homosaurus ; a local authority file for Indigenous peoples and incorporating the work of the Xwi7Xwa (whei-wha) Library and the Greater Victoria Public Library.
Open Access
Distributed labour: managing harmful language work in a Canadian library partnership
(6/13/2024) Fesknak, Matthew; Zoricic, Christina
A major reason for the prevalence of harmful language in library catalogs is the hegemony of the Library of Congress. Recent threads in the AUTOCAT listserv show the resistance of catalogers to include their own voices, let alone the voices of marginalized groups that have been underrepresented in the profession, throwing their hands up and saying I’m just a cataloger, we have to follow the established rules, etc. At the same time, metadata staff have been cut from many university libraries, leaving those who are interested in doing metadata justice work overwhelmed. In order to address some of these challenges, Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) Collaborative Futures (a shared library platform group) created the Decolonizing Descriptions Implementation Working Group to manage harmful language across the Collaborative Futures partnership. As members of this group, we would like to discuss our efforts to manage alternative vocabularies in an Alma network zone environment, and some of the issues and crossroads we have faced thus far. Our current approach is to replace and/or amend LCSH terms with other, already established vocabularies like Manitoba Archival Information Network Indigenous Subject Headings, Saskatchewan Indigenous Subject Headings, Canadian Subject Headings, Canadiana, and Homosaurus, but this may evolve over time. We will present what our partner libraries have been working on individually and our working group’s efforts to centralize efforts and possibly implement a distributed labor model in OCUL CF. We are a nascent group and will be seeking feedback from colleagues.
Open Access
Apparitional Representations: Disability History, Reparative Descriptions, and Ethical Failings in a Special Research Collection
(6/13/2024) Weiss, Melissa
In this presentation, I discuss the process and outcomes of a reparative description project I undertook for my master’s thesis at the University of Oklahoma. My thesis focused on remediating disability-related descriptions in the Western History Collections. I examined a variety of theoretical models and attempted to apply them as I remediated descriptions. My presentation covers the challenges of trying to remediate descriptions in an archive not dedicated to disability history and provides a methodology for doing remediations that might help archivists struggling with incomplete information about items in a collection.
Open Access
2024 Metadata Justice in Oklahoma Libraries & Archives Symposium Program
(2024-06-13) UCO Chambers Library, /
Open Access
2023 Proceedings of the Metadata Justice in Oklahoma Libraries & Archives Symposium
(2023-08-31) Beezley, Shay; Steele, Tom; Long, Misty; Masood, Sana; Lefler, Brooke
Open Access
Fus Fixico Classification System
(2023-07-21) Hutto, Heather D.
Western cataloging systems organize information by subject and are created through a western lens. Indigenous communities organize information according to other factors, notably: cosmology, geography, language, and a sense of being. Our library created and actively uses the Fus Fixico (“Angry Bird” in Muskogee 'Creek' Language) Classification System (FFCS). FFCS is named after the Fus Fixico letters, which were written by Alexander Posey, a Muscogee Humorist, who served as secretary at the Sequoyah Constitutional Convention. FFCS borrows elements from the Brian Deer Classification System, Dewey, and Graph Theory to create a more inclusive system that empowers improved metadata and LoC subjects to thrive, while also still providing for user-friendly collocation
Open Access
The Creation of the Tribal Nations of Oklahoma Metadata Database
(2023-07-20) Macken, Megan; Palone, Kaitlyn; Zilinskas, Lulu
In the closing discussions of last year's symposium the impromptu creation of the Metadata Justice Collective occurred. Those that volunteered to chair, Megan Macken, Lulu Zilinskas, and Kaitlyn Palone, met shortly thereafter about possible projects that could use collaborative work. Megan presented the idea to create a database of Oklahoma Tribal Nation preferred names. The speakers presented on how this work was accomplished, problems encountered, and plans for future.
Open Access
Politeness AND Executing Inclusive Metadata with OK Libraries & Archives
(2023-07-20) Chang, Suzette V.; Thick Descriptions
As of 2018, Oklahoma ranked as the politest state in the country. This ranking speaks to a powerful intention. Often politeness and respect are defined as synonymous, but these words are not the same. During this humanity driven conversation, Suzette Chang, Founder/CEO of Thick Descriptions an organization that disrupts traditional educational methods with anthropology to help humans thrive where they are building stronger communities, attendees will learn and discuss how politeness can be a barrier to accurately and respectfully describing materials related to underrepresented communities. Participants will laugh/smile/giggle/reflect and strategically think about how to be polite AND offer inclusive metadata.
Open Access
Beyond Exploitation: Metadata Justice and Prison Labor
(2023-07-20) Howard, Kristen C.
Large-scale digitization projects require enormous amounts of resources and labor, both of which are frequently in short supply in libraries and archives. How, then, has Oklahoma’s Yearbook Project been able to scan and process high school yearbooks at no cost for schools, libraries, museums, and historical societies? As a service of Oklahoma Correctional Industries, a state-level prison industry program, the Yearbook Project relied on the penal labor exemption of the Thirteenth Amendment which allows for involuntary servitude to occur behind prison bars. Although the Yearbook Project is currently on hiatus due to an ongoing investigation, metadata specialists, cataloguers, and the wider memory work community must still grapple with the legacy of this and other exploitative and unethical programs that have contributed to the resources and services we offer patrons. This presentation sheds light on the issue of exploitative prison labor on behalf of libraries and archives, and offers a solution grounded in metadata justice: labeling items, collections, and databases that benefit from exploitative labor
Open Access
Everyone Belongs Here: Creating an Inclusive Public Library Local History and Genealogy Collection
(2023-07-20) Skinner, Michelle
The Chickasha Public Library maintains a local history and genealogy print collection that is currently being cataloged and organized. This presentation will give an overview of the process involved in creating original records with accurate and inclusive metadata and descriptions that reflect the history, perspective, and experiences of diverse groups so that all people can see both themselves and others accurately reflected in the collection.
Open Access
2023 Metadata Justice in Oklahoma Libraries & Archives Symposium Program
(2023-07-20) UCO Chambers Library; UCO Chambers Library
Open Access
2022 Metadata Justice in Oklahoma Libraries & Archives Symposium Program
(2022-07-14) UCO Chambers Library