Advancing Social Justice through University Libraries Collections: Next steps
September 2020
Following several organization-wide conversations conducted during Summer 2020 on
University Libraries collections and social justice, Executive Committee is sharing three initialsteps to advance movement toward systemic change in local collections practices. Throughthese action steps, interested Libraries’ employees will engage in creating action plans andtimelines for subsequent work. Each action step will be addressed by a workgroup.
1.

Defining our terms: How does “social justice” relate to collections work?

The IDEAS committee has draft definitions of social justice under discussion. Working withthese, the work of this workgroup will be twofold: 1. Identify the range of collections work thatshould be in scope for consideration in this ongoing initiative, and 2. create a values statementsummarizing our organizational commitment to social justice in collections work.
Questions to consider include: How is social justice relevant to collections work? Are there
collections areas/concepts that weren’t touched on in the summer conversations that weshould include in our future work? Does a social justice orientation help us to prioritize ourwork differently? If so, how?
2.

Survey the landscape: What are others doing?

This workgroup will identify models for potential work in areas such as: evaluating existingcollections, assessing arrangement practices, description work, and discovery support. The
summer conversations allowed the Libraries to identify a range of other organizations andcommunities that are focused on social justice and collections and have done work that we canlearn from.
Questions to consider include: Which organizations and communities are doing good work inthis space? How can we engage with them? What kinds of questions are they asking? Whereare they seeing success or resistance? What conversations, practices, tools, or initiatives could
be relevant to our own work? Do we need more learning or skills in order to participate in thiswork?
3.

Inventory our work: What are we already doing?

This workgroup will do an inventory, keeping in mind that collections work includes not justcollecting but also licensing and purchasing, digitization and digital preservation, access andaccessibility, description, etc. From summer conversations participants made clear that there isalready a lot of interest and work being done within the Libraries, but we don’t have sharedknowledge of that work across the organization.

Questions to consider include: What are individuals or units doing? Where are our existing
practices documented? Do we have existing partnerships that are relevant? Where do we havestrengths, limitations, and gaps?
How to volunteer and responsibilities:•••••

Send email expressing your interest and which group you want to work on to Christine
OConnell (oconnell.145@osu.edu) by 10/15/2020.
All volunteers accepted.
Expectations for participation: attend meetings, contribute to discussion, and take on workso tasks are equitably distributed across workgroup members.
Once workgroups members are identified, Christine will set up the first meeting. Thereafter
the group will identify a convener who will identify an end date for the group work andschedule future meetings.
Information about how progress will be regularly shared with the organization isforthcoming.

Appendix: Background for the Collections + SJ initiative
In June of 2020, the Ohio State University Libraries released “A Statement from University
Libraries Supporting Black Lives Matter“ noting:
We have worked to build an organization that values equity, diversity, inclusion, accessand social justice – a library that provides welcoming, supportive environments for all topursue and share knowledge. But this is not enough. It is not enough to say that wevalue diversity, equity, and inclusion or speak about it in general terms. We must listen
intently, and we must be clear in our words and actions.
As part of that work, the Libraries launched a process that will “examine our collections toensure our investments and practices advance social justice.” This work seeks to produce
significant and visible changes to our collections and collections-related functions so that they
better demonstrate our commitments to social justice.
The first step in that process was initiating a set of open conversations convening employees
across the Libraries. Conversations acknowledged that ideology is inscribed in our all of ourcollections practices and thus our collections. Decisions about description, access to content,
prioritization of work that stewards collections into the future (for instance) cannot be neutralor objective. Decisions about which parts of our collections we highlight in various ways for ourusers cannot be free of bias. Questions posed by discussion facilitators included: What are wealready doing? Where are we falling short? What changes would be high impact? What arebarriers to change? Participants were asked to consider the full scope of collections andcollections-related functions with the intention of surfacing many facets of where we could bedoing better in Libraries work with collections. Not just focusing on growing collections,participants considered Libraries collections as they are seen and experienced by users.

2Three sixty-minute, synchronous, facilitated conversations were offered and attended by 58
individuals besides the facilitators and sponsors. The conversations were conducted with twosponsors and three trained facilitators. Sponsors are Karla Strieb and Jennifer Vinopal andfacilitators were Quanetta Batts, Amanda Folk, and Amy McCrory. Each session had adesignated lead facilitator, a chat monitor, the sponsors took extensive notes for eachconversation and the chats from each session were captured. Notes and chats were deidentified and, following the conversations, all of the de-identified notes and chat were sharedwith employees and a free text “survey” was created and shared with employees with twoweeks provided for input (six individuals provided extensive input). Transcripts of theconversations and survey are available at:https://osu.box.com/s/pajtm8c6ahqknks02g0gqwupxgysfayw
Conversation Themes and Threads
1. Existing but uncoordinated work: There are many efforts, programs, activities etc. relating
to social justice, minoritized perspectives, and challenging oppression going on, but theLibraries’ work is uncoordinated and obscured across the organization. It would be helpful
to understand and document what we’re already doing. For instance, there was curiosity
about the work of the special collections Mary P. Key residents. Even where there is someawareness of activity, there isn’t necessarily sufficient transparency or a framework fororganizing, aligning and prioritizing work.
2. Consider existing collections: Much conversation focused on adding to our collections withvery limited consideration of our existing collections and how we are engaging them.
Existing collections are an important area to look at as part of the initiative. We cannot
transform our collections and collections-related functions just through new content. We
also need to ensure that we are not isolating certain parts of our collections as the “socialjustice” or anti-racism sections. We need to apply our social justice and anti-oppression
critical thinking to all of our collections and collection activities.
3. Employee knowledge and ability to implement change: We also need to look at theabilities and practices of existing employees, which include knowledge of relevant
descriptive vocabularies, regular monitoring of evolving professional standards, and anunderstanding of the technologies that support good practices. Employees report feelingconstrained in their ability to implement approaches that advance social justice incollections description. We should work to increase support for them in these activities. We
also need to recognize that some historical materials can be very triggering for some
employees who process them. Keep employee well-being in mind as we plan and assignwork.
4. Need to broaden our perspective beyond PWI: We have many ideas, especially ideas forindividual professional action. However, we did not surface many perspectives from beyond
3our lens as a Predominantly White Institution. We need to find mechanisms to broaden andchallenge our perspectives. Look to other non PWI organizations (e.g. HBCUs, HSIs, MSIs)
that might serve as role models for us. There are other ideas, models, and innovations atother institutions and professional groups.
5. Current processes and policies often make it difficult to acquire non-traditional materials
that would help to advance equity and social justice within in our collections, including (butnot limited to) materials from certain regions of the world, works from very small
publishers, and self-published materials (like zines).
6. Our resources are finite and often inadequate for our collections work generally. Yet wecannot make progress dependent on new resources. We need to make progress to attract
new resources. To make visible shifts in our collections work we must commit to engaging
our resources differently and set priorities to guide decision-making, and change our work.
This applies well beyond selection to a range of other collections activities.
7. There is awareness that partnership requires trust that is not necessarily present now.
However, we perceive multiple opportunities to build trust and partnership, serve ourusers, and live our values. Conversations acknowledged that trust needs to be built and thatmuch in our history (as a land grant and a PWI, for example) and our current culture justifies
distrust. To make change, relationship development will require intentional trust-building,mutual exchange and shared goals. Issues identified include:a. A consideration of the language we use to describe our collections (e.g. MD,
finding aids, catalog records, etc.) and whether or not it is consideredappropriate by the identities/communities represented in those collections. This
could include both locally-developed descriptions, as well as descriptors
developed by professional organizations.
b. Working with communities to help them preserve and make accessible theirown materials, rather than seeking acquisition to our collections. This means
investing resources into our partners.
c. Investment in exploring new forms of publishing that meet diverse
communities’ needs (e.g., LatinX Talk)
8. Given the finite resources mentioned earlier, there is a potentially rich space forpartnership with Libraries and campus advancement (gifts and grants).
Other organizations working in this space:• MIT – “Creating a Social Justice Mindset: Diversity, Inclusion, and Social Justice in theCollections Directorate of the MIT Libraries” https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/108771• University of Denver Dance Archive (content/trigger warnings at top of collections whereappropriate)• University of Texas – metadata “disappeared people”, EXAMPLE• UC Berkeley Library, ResponsibleAccessWorkflows,4•••••••••••FAIR data sharing
OCIO – Report on Responsible Operations in Data
Allea – Sustainable and Fair Data Sharing in the Humanities
Blackivists https://www.theblackivists.com/,
Documenting the Now https://www.docnow.io/
Penn libraries partnering with public libraries to reach communities in Philadelphia. Theirdrive was not to add content to their collection –public library was positioned as thesteward“Constructing Digital Humanities Grant Proposals as a Librarian” –https://youtu.be/kJlH3NduRY8
DCentricLatinx Talk
Disabilities Studies Quarterly
Ohio State – Affordable Learning Exchange, Drake Institute, Anti-Racism Libguide, Black
Student Association, Scarlet and Gay, Hale Black Cultural Center, Ohio State Press LatinX
children’s book, Buser Collection

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