Harmful Language in the Danforth Library Catalog

Our catalog records may contain harmful language.

Harmful or offensive language may appear for the following reasons:

    We have transcribed information directly from the materials themselves. While this preserves important context, the creators’ biases and prejudices may also be reflected.

    Some derogatory terms, once considered acceptable and used to describe historically oppressed people, have been reclaimed and used by authors and creators from those communities.

    Other terms historically used by a community to describe themselves have fallen out of use or out of favor.

    Library of Congress Subject Headings, which enable standardized searching and access across our holdings, retain certain problematic terms, and the process of reviewing and approving those headings is extensive and often involves legislative action, which may take months or years to resolve. We support efforts underway throughout the profession to change these terms and will also take a localized approach to replacing some harmful terms with acceptable local headings in our own catalog.

You may also find harmful language because our records have been created over many decades. Older records may contain language that was acceptable historically to some people with the power to set norms but is recognized widely as offensive today.

We may be able to change language in these records. If you encounter harmful language, please email us at libraryhelp@nec.edu. We will respond to your feedback and communicate any action we will take to update the language.

 

This statement draws on language from similar statements published by Gustavus Adolphus College, the University of Maryland, and the University of Virginia.