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Rauner Library Reparative Description

Documenting Rauner Library's reparative description practices, policies, and guidelines.

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Rauner Library Contextualizing Harmful Content and Reparative Description

Harmful Content and Reparative Description Statement

Rauner Special Collections Library’s collections span several millennia of history and items in these collections are a product of their time. Some items may be harmful or difficult to view because they are ableist, antisemitic, classist, homophobic, racist, sexist, transphobic, or contain otherwise harmful or hateful views and opinions, as well as terminology that may have once been commonly used but is now considered offensive. Similarly, some of our archival description may be harmful to marginalized groups or otherwise offensive, or inaccurate. We are working to identify and contextualize potentially harmful content, and identify and repair harmful archival description, prioritizing marginalized groups.

We recognize that our work is necessarily iterative, collaborative, aspirational, and ongoing. For this reason, this document is a living document. We welcome feedback about potentially harmful content or description at Rauner.Reference@dartmouth.edu. We also encourage researchers working with materials concerning marginalized groups to collaborate with members of the community represented.