Sara on co-leading a cross-sector collaboration on First Nations Collection Description Guidelines.
That all our communities deserve to discover and access our services and collections in a safe way is a foundational value for many in our profession, but increasingly we have come to understand that our descriptive practices have not always supported this outcome. Outdated, harmful terminology present in our catalogues and discovery interfaces present a very real barrier to trust and engagement, particularly for First Nations members of our community (Frick & Proffitt, 2022, p. 9).
Therefore, in late 2022, I started to co-lead a First Nations Collection Description Guidelines project team to drive the creation of guidelines for the description of First Nations material – the most pressing recommendation from the NSLA audit.
I am excited to be contributing to a project that can:
- Deliver concrete, positive action. While it is a daunting task to create national guidelines, and we may not make them perfect on the first try, we are committed to contributing to meaningful change.
- Assist our communities to discover and access our collections in a safe way. While yes, it will be a mammoth task to update existing bibliographic records and make our catalogues safe, (we’ll go into the details of ‘how’ in subsequent posts in this series), it is better to start somewhere than not at all.
- Enable our diverse communities to see themselves accurately represented in our catalogues. This may mean using Indigenous thesauri and including geographic and language identifiers in bibliographic records (ATSILIRN, n.d). By using the language of the community, we can help with discoverability, access, and building trust (Frick & Proffitt, 2022, p. 9).
I am thrilled to work with Tui Raven, an Indigenous consultant, who will provide expertise in the area and ensure that appropriate groups are consulted throughout. We are also pleased to have Tui as a panellist for the discussion on the audit and development of guidelines for the description of First Nations collections at the Kummargii Yulendji Symposium co-convened by Informit and CAVAL on how we describe, apply, and amplify Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander publications.
While we are yet to see what the guidelines developed through the project will look like, personally, it is quite inspiring to be part of this collaborative project!
References:
Frick, R. L., & Proffitt, M. (2022). Reimagine Descriptive Workflows: A Community-informed Agenda for Reparative and Inclusive Descriptive Practice. OCLC Research. https://doi.org/10.25333/wd4b-bs51
Author – Sara Davidsson
As Member Services Coordinator at CAVAL, Sara collaborates with the entire CAVAL membership and beyond on projects and programs of all sizes. Sara also serves as Secretary on the ALIA Community on Resource Description (ACORD) special interest group.
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