Words Matter

Over the past decade, librarians and archivists have become increasingly concerned with outdated and offensive language in metadata and collections. In 2022, the Schaumburg Township (Ill.) District Library (STDL) adopted a harmful-content statement—also called a “harmful-language statement” or a “statement on harmful content”—to recognize and reckon with problematic language in the library catalog.

Harmful-content statements help libraries focus on describing materials in a way that is respectful and informed by their communities. At STDL, our statement focuses on empathy, transparency, and goal-setting for the future. It is a tool for ongoing accountability, making a priority of work that is often given too little attention. The statement should be a catalyst for meaningful conversations about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

The literature on this topic generally focuses on questioning neutrality, the importance of transparency, and changeable solutions. These ideals informed our strategy and guided our decision making when crafting our statement.

How we started

STDL serves a population of 130,000 residents in a cluster of suburbs northwest of Chicago—Elk Grove Village, Hanover Park, Hoffman Estates, Roselle, Schaumburg, and Streamwood. The library’s facilities consist of a central library, in Schaumburg, and two branches, in Hanover Park and Hoffman Estates. More than 1 million visitors come through the doors of the three locations every year. The library houses a collection of more than 440,000 items and an e-media collection of more than 200,000 items.

While the population the library serves is primarily non-Hispanic white, the Hispanic and Asian populations have almost doubled in the past 20 years, with numerous languages spoken at home. The foreign-born population is around 31.3%.

In late 2020, STDL formed a DEI committee in response to the brutal murder of George Floyd and many other people of color. While the committee primarily focused on staff training and initiatives, the changing culture of the library overall played a role in garnering support for creating a harmful-content statement.

Public libraries do not generally own high-profile historical collections, so they have not been at the forefront of harmful-content statements. As more libraries adopted these statements, however, they have become an opportunity to discuss the ethics of description—especially descriptions relating to queer concepts, disability, and communities comprising those who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC).

The idea that our mid-sized suburban library could contribute to this work seemed both doable and worthwhile. A cata­loging librarian, the access services director, and the executive director of our library collaborated on the first draft of the statement and published it on STDL’s website in June 2022.

Developing, exploring

After we crafted our statement, certain takeaways stood out for us and for other libraries considering this work. These areas are important for acquiring the necessary institutional support while ensuring that efforts are successful.

Whereas academic libraries use their unique collections as a starting place, we began with our intention to improve description. We started drafting a new strategic plan around the same time we began having conversations about the statement, and we believed the plan should include a DEI metadata goal. The access services director asked if this could be included as a library-wide goal, a suggestion that received enthusiastic support from the administration.

We wanted to integrate three main components into our harmful-content statement: (1) recognition of bias in the catalog; (2) a commitment to remediating bias by using alternative vocabularies, removing offensive subjects, and implementing descriptions in the language of the material (i.e., Spanish-language materials described in Spanish); and (3) providing a place for library users’ feedback on harmful content they encounter.

To start, we reviewed the list of statements regarding bias in libraries and archives available on the Cataloging Lab website, as we narrowed down the type of statement we wanted to craft. We had two main goals for our statement: to speak directly to our audience, and to be clear and concise.

In drafting our harmful-content statement, we started from a shared outline and adapted pieces of the statements we liked best, focusing on some main themes: social responsibility, person-first language, the importance of world language resources being accurately described, and implementing alternative vocabularies. It was important for us to use our statement as an affirmation of an ongoing commitment to continue working toward these critical cataloging goals.

Soliciting feedback

The harmful-content statement lives on the About Us page of our library’s website, along with our library’s vision, ­mission, and values statements, and is one of the first things a website visitor might see. While some libraries we researched opted to create a new form where site visitors can report harmful content, our administration likes the simplicity of having one place for all feedback and then directing those comments to the most appropriate place. The feedback link on our statement directs to our general comments and suggestions page.

This approach ties directly into our values statement of service, trust, and dedication. We worked with Digital Services to provide a link to our statement in every catalog record, allowing concerned patrons to access the feedback form. We did consider asking for a policy that would require consistent placement of our statement, but having links in accessible locations and on high-traffic pages has fit our needs.

Most of the feedback received so far has come from other library professionals; to date, we have received no feedback from our patrons. We are glad to have a space for feedback if someone notices something harmful, but we are just as happy to have a space that gives our community members more information about how items end up in the catalog.

As we make more changes to our catalog to fulfill the statement’s goals, we expect we may get more feedback. The goals may change, and we will continue updating the statement as necessary, which may also impact the feedback that we receive.

Making progress

After a few months, we convened a group of staff volunteers to begin tackling the project of updating outdated and offensive subject headings in our catalog. Before our first meeting, we wanted everyone to have the same context in mind. We assigned readings outlining the problematic history of subject access in libraries and providing some solutions for minimizing harm. After completing the readings, the group agreed to create a signed statement of intention to help guide the decisions we made as a group. The adopted intentions included:

• Accepting that no solution is permanent
• Describing people using the terms they prefer
• Acknowledging that neutrality is not possible
• Being transparent in our reparative work

This work is ongoing. We meet monthly to evaluate headings identified by library staffers as problematic and worthy of investigation. The bulk of catalog headings we evaluated involve ­terminology about issues related to disability, LGBTQ+, and BIPOC themes. While our group includes representation in some of those categories, we are entirely white people. As such, we are careful about making changes to headings involving communities and histories that we do not know much about, and we assign these headings for further research before making any determination.

The goal, ultimately, is metadata creation that is inclusive, empathetic, transparent, and representative of our entire community.

We can flip and update headings in the discovery layer without any updates needed in the integrated library system. This process means the bulk of the work has been deciding on new terminology. It is a slow process, but a fruitful one. Once we make a first pass through the subject headings audit, we will tackle other goals outlined in our statement.

As we continue this work, we feel the harmful-content statement provides an invaluable guide in holding us accountable to this work, both to ourselves as an institution and to our community. To have the goals outlined and available, we are transparent about what is not currently being done as much as what is.

We found that the process of crafting a harmful-content statement that includes proactive goal-setting provides a great space for collaboration, transparency, and cataloging with empathy. It has allowed us to dedicate time and resources to projects that might otherwise have taken a backseat to the everyday needs of the library. We strongly recommend attaching your own statement and initiatives to strategic planning or other similar initiatives, as it creates momentum and accountability that are hard to replicate.

We found value in cultivating a collaborative space where all areas of the library could contribute, so we recommend creating a team of folks from many different librarianship backgrounds. Lastly, we recommend regular review of the statement in recognition that new solutions may be necessary over time. The goal, ultimately, is metadata creation that is inclusive, empathetic, transparent, and representative of our entire community.