Matienzo explores the argument that metadata, archiving, and linked data are never neutral; naming holds power and can reinforce problematic narratives about gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and more. He specifically challenges the myth about linked data as completely accessible and democratic; linked data can harm the communities which are mis- or under-represented, especially because corporations
Jules argues that social media has been crucial for documenting and disseminating social activism, especially for Black communities. After the Watts Rebellion’s 50th anniversary, Jules decided to research how much primary material about specific rebellions were available; the results, not surprisingly, were slim. For the digital #BlackLivesMatter collection that Jules helped spearhead, which was also
Fiesler et al. conduct a case study on Archive of Our Own (AO3), an online fan fiction archive website, to demonstrate how to implement Bardzell’s Feminist HCI into practice. Using a series of interviews and exploration of the site, the authors explore how AO3’s design centers around participation, pluralism, advocacy, and more. Although AO3 is
Drabinski looks at activist catalogers who focus on “correcting” certain classifications and knowledge organization systems; the problem with the notion of “correctness,” though, is it reinforces the notion that these knowledge systems are universal and erases the fluidity of knowledges produced by the social, political, and temporal. Drabinski advocates for LIS practitioners to use a
The GLIS at University of Illinois held a townhall meeting to discuss issues around race and privilege; this townhall meeting led to focus groups and then reading groups, encouraging further discussions about diversity. The main products of the town hall were new extracurricular reading groups and an entirely new course focused around social justice issues.
Archivist scholars argue that it is not enough for collections to be inclusive of cultures and voices, but we must make “structural changes” in which Indigenous people still have ownership over their texts and stories. This notion of ownership, though, becomes less defined when Indigenous cultural artifacts are collected by institutions; when a non-Indigenous culture
A foundational article in the field of archival science and critical archives theory, Harris, writing in 2002, argues that far from being a simple reflection of reality, archives are constructed windows into personal and collective processes. They at once express and are instruments of prevailing relations of power. Verne Harris makes these arguments through an
This article reports on an early project exploring the possibilities of collaborative description of Indigenous belongings held in museums. The authors conducted a collaborative research project on how multiple local expert communities interacted with and reacted to objects held within multiple museums. The ethnographic research conducted in this study demonstrates the need for museums to
The Zine Union Catalog (ZUC) has been a collaborative process from its beginnings at the Zine Librarians (un)Conference (ZLuC) in Seattle in 2009. Zine readers, researchers, and librarians need a unified resource for finding finding and sharing zine metadata and location information. ZineCat will offer a similar benefit to zine librarians, allowing them to share catalog
Sadler and Bourg argue that libraries are never neutral and, therefore, should do work to problematize and subvert harmful cultural biases and information organization in library discovery. They use Bardzell’s Feminist HCI as a framework to provide suggestions and examples for digital projects and larger projects that incorporated social justice in their design. Sadler, B.,
