Statement on Potentially Harmful Content in Archival Collections
The Charles H. Trout Library's Digital Archives and Special Collections is a portal to digital content held in our collections.
We collect items that document the history of Harcum College from different time periods and cultures. As a result, some of the materials presented here may reflect outdated, biased, offensive, and possibly violent views and opinions due to pervasive systemic intolerance.
We present this content and make it available for research and study as part of the historical record. We work to balance the preservation of this history with sensitivity to how these materials are presented to and perceived by users. These viewpoints and attitudes are inconsistent with our values, but the original descriptions are retained to ensure that they are not erased from the historical record.
Librarians and archivists often re-use language provided by creators or former owners of the material. This can provide important context, but can also reflect biases and prejudices.
Librarians and archivists often use a standardized set of terms, such as the Library of Congress Subject Headings, to describe materials. Some of these terms are outdated, offensive, or insensitive.
The Trout Library is committed to working with our campus community partners to assess and update descriptions that are harmful. We are revising descriptions and standardized sets of descriptive terms and supplementing them with more respectful terms. We are researching the problem, listening to users, and finding new solutions.
You can help us by identifying and reporting harmful content. In the interest of maintaining the historical record, we will not remove the material but we will flag the material with a warning in the description.