For the sake of collating all useful information in one place, this page provides a comprehensive list of resources related to EDI issues in the heritage sector, including but not limited to inclusive description work. CHTNUK does not necessarily endorse the approaches and strategies that appear within the guidance documents, publications, and projects that are listed below. There is always room for improvement and heritage professionals are encouraged to use their best judgement to evaluate the appropriateness of any guides, projects, and models. To suggest additional resources to add to this list or report broken links, please email culturalheritageterminology@gmail.com.
Featured Books
Caswell, Michelle. Urgent Archives: Enacting Liberatory Memory Work. Routledge, 2021.
Sheffield, Rebecca Taves. Documenting Rebellions: A Study of Four Lesbian and Gay Archives in Queer Times. Litwin Books & Library Juice Press, 2020.
Turner, Hannah. Cataloguing Culture: Legacies of colonialism in Museum Documentation. University of British Columbia Press, 2020.
Accardi, Maria T., editor. The Feminist Reference Desk: Concepts, Critiques, and Conversations. Litwin Books & Library Juice Press, 2017.
Vincent, John. LGBT People and the UK Cultural Sector. Routledge, 2017.
Tythacott, Louise and Panggah Ardiyansyah, editors. returning Southeast Asia’s past: Objects, Museums, and Restitution. National University of Singapore Press, 2021.
Shopland, Norena. A Practical Guide to Searching LGBTQIA Historical Records. Routledge, 2020.
Murawski, Mike. Museums as Agents of Change: A Guide to Becoming a Changemaker. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2021.
Colwell, Chip. Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America’s Culture. University of Chicago Press, 2019.
Turnbull, Paul. Science, Museums and Collecting the Indigenous Dead in Colonial Australia. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
Shellman, Cecile. Effective Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, Inclusion, and Anti-Racism Practices for Museums: From the Inside Out (American Alliance of Museums), Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2022.
Raicovich, Laura. Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest. Verso, 2021.
Adair, Joshua G. and Amy K. Levin, editors. Museums, Sexuality, and Activism. Taylor & Francis, 2020.
Hicks, Dan. The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution. Pluto Press, 2020.
Sandell, Richard, Jocelynn Dodd, and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, editors. Re-presenting Disability: activism and agency in the museum. Routledge, 2010.
Savoy, Bénédicte. Africa’s Struggle for its Art: History of a Postcolonial Defeat. Translated by Susanne Meyer-Abich. Princeton University Press, 2022.
Scale, Mark-Shane. Colonization and Imperialism in Libraries: Perspective from a Caribbean Immigrant. FriesenPress, 2021.
Catlin-Legutko, Cinnamon and Chris Taylor, editors. The Inclusive Museum Leader. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2021.
Douglas, Veronica Arellano and Joanna Gadsby, editors. Deconstructing Service in Libraries: Intersections of Identities and Expectations. Litwin Books & Library Juice Press, 2020.
Wexelbaum, Rachel. queers online. Litwin Books & Library Juice Press, 2015.
Leung, Sofia Y. and Jorge R. López-McKnight, editors. Knowledge Justice: Disrupting Library and Information Studies through Critical Race Theory. The MIT Press, 2021.
Procter, Alice. The Whole Picture: The colonial story of the art in our museums & why we need to talk about it. Octopus Publishing Group, 2020.
Sullivan, Nikki and Craig Middleton. Queering the Museum. Routledge, 2020.
Colem Johnetta Betsch and Laura L. Lott, editors. Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion in Museums (American Alliance of Museums), 2019.
Sleeper-Smith, Susan, editor. Contesting Knowledge: Museums and Indigenous Perspectives. Nebraska Press, 2007.
Descriptive Practice
Carissa Chew’s collaborative Inclusive Terminology Glossary aims to collate all existing terminology guidance in one place, providing UK heritage professionals with specific guidance on the historic and contemporary usage of terms relating to race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, and disability.
Released in October 2019, the Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia’s (A4BLiP) Anti-Racist Description Resources publication provides detailed metadata recommendations for materials relating to African American communities. The guide is intended for archivists and museum professionals in the USA.
2022 Archivoz article by David Woodbridge, Curstaidh Reid, and Mariam Aboelezz titled “Conscientious Bilingual Description: Treating problematic language in colonial records on the Qatar Digital Library”. This useful case study discusses issues of dealing with harmful language in India Office Records (IOR) collections.
“The Black Model: From Géricault to Matisse” exhibition that was launched in 2019 at The Louvre in Paris aimed to recentre the humanity of Black subjects in art by providing alternative titles for all of the paintings on display.
USA-based Library worker driven movement dedicated to bringing social justice principles into libraries.
2020 blog post on redressing bias in digital collection descriptions by Presbyterian Historical Society USA.
The Presbyterian Historical Society USA’s glossary of discriminatory/preferred terminology, mostly relating to Indigenous groups in North America and Siberia.
Chilcott, Alicia. “Towards protocols for describing racially offensive language in UK public archives.” Archival Science 19 (2019), 359-376.
Princeton University working group formed in 2019 that is dedicated to tackling the complex issue of cultural sensitivity in archival description. The group has produced some internal processing guidelines and considerations.
Rinn, Meghan. “Nineteenth-century depictions of disabilities and modern metadata: a consideration of material in the P.T. Barnum Digital Collection.” Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies 5 (2018).
List of inclusive description resources provided by the Society for American Archivists.
10 principles for digital cataloguing by the Network of European Museum Organisations.
“Toward Culturally Competent Archival (Re)Description of Marginalised Histories” is a blog post by the Society of American Archivists that recaps a 2018 presentation by Kelly Bolding et al.
Presentation slides from “Toward Culturally Competent Archival (Re)Description of Marginalized Histories”, a panel presentation at 2018 SAA Annual Conference by Dorothy Berry, Kelly Bolding, Annie Tang, and Rachel E. Winston.
Guidelines for museum image descriptions by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.
Olson, Hope A. “The Power to Name: Representation in Library Catalogs.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 26.3 (2001), 639–668.
“Addressing Bias in Your Catalog”, presentation slides by Violet Fox, Tammy Moorse, and Tiffany Wilson.
Forum titled “Cooperatively Conscientious Cataloging” held at ALA Midwinter 2018. Write-up by Carol Robenstine Miller, ALCTS News.
Jessica Tai, “Retelling as Resistance: Towards the Implementation of Community-Centered Frameworks in the Redescription of Photographic Archives Documenting Marginalized Communities”, Views, Newsletter of the SAA Visual Materials Section, Spring/Summer 2018.
Updated in 2007, the Protocols for Native American Archival Materials created by First Archivist Circle set out the guiding principles for respectful cataloguing practices in the USA. The Protocols were created in consultation with Indigenous communities in the United States.
Guidance for Higher Education institutions approaching terminology around race and ethnicity.
USA-based initiative run by cataloguers, librarians, archivists, scholars, museum and information professionals interested in improving the description and classification of queer people in heritage and other information systems. The Collective’s primary goal is to develop a set of best practices for the description, cataloguing, and classification of queer information resources.
The Trans Metadata Collective is a group of dozens of cataloguers, librarians, archivists, scholars, and information professionals with a concerted interest in improving the description and classification of trans and gender diverse people across the GLAM sector. The collective released their report on “Metadata Best Practices for Trans and Gender Diverse Resources” in June 2022.
Blog run by University of Cambridge librarians on topics related to decolonisation, including language and cataloguing issues.
Treshani Perera’s article titled “Description Specialists and Inclusive Description Work and/or Initiatives—An Exploratory Study”.
RLUK report on the DCDC22 roundtable discussion with speakers Rachel Minott, Mel Bach, and Carissa Chew that aimed to highlight examples of EDI good practice in archives, libraries and beyond.
Caswell, Michelle. Urgent Archives: Enacting Liberatory Memory Work. Routledge, 2021.
Terminology guidance and published terminology resources kept up to date by Collections Trust.
Important guidance on how to account for different naming practices around the world, such as within English-language web forms, databases, and ontologies. By Richard Ishida, W3C.
Tai, Jessica. “Cultural Humility as a Framework for Anti-Oppressive Archival Description”, Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies 3.2 (2020).
Turner, Hannah. Cataloguing Culture: Legacies of colonialism in Museum Documentation. University of British Columbia Press, 2020.
In 2020, Sunshine State Digital Network compiled list of resources related to conscious editing and anti-oppressive metadata practices. Their three-part conference titled “Introduction to Conscious Editing”, which explored conscious editing initiatives taking place in the USA in 2020, is available to watch on Youtube.
Guidelines for the inclusive and conscientious description of collections related to the history of medicine, released by Harvard University Center for the History of Medicine in 2020.
Produced in the Netherlands by the National Museum of World Cultures (Tropenmuseum, Afrika Museum, Museum Volkenkunde, Wereldmuseum) in 2018, the Words Matter publication is an “unfinished” guide to word choices in the cultural sector. The terminology guidance that is offered is most useful in relation to the Dutch Empire.
2018 report based on the OCLC’s survey findings into whether institutions had made metadata changes to redress offensive language.
Sharon Mizota is a USA-based DEI Metadata Consultant, who helps arts and culture organisations transform and share their metadata to contribute to a more just, equitable, and representative society.
Dean, Courtney. “Redescribing Japanese American Collections at UCLA.” Descriptive Notes, Newsletter of the SAA Description Section, 2019, 6-9.
Blog post on “The Ethics of Language in Cataloging” by Chicago History Museum, written by Elizabeth McKinley and Gretchen Neidhart.
Indexing, Classifications & Alternative Vocabularies
A subject heading thesaurus that was developed in consultation with First Nations communities in Australia.
2017 forum titled “Power That Is Moral: Creating a Cataloging Code of Ethics”. Write-up by Billie Cotterman, ALCTS News.
A crowdsourced compilation of problematic Library of Congress Subject Headings, created by Cataloging Lab.
Gross, Tina and Violet B. Fox. “Authority Work as Outreach”. In Ethical Questions in Name Authority Control, edited by Jane Sandberg, Sacramento: Library Juice Press, 2019, 335-348.
Gender, Sex, and Sexual Orientation ontology resource produced by Clair A. Kronk.
Report of the SAC Working Group on Alternatives to LCSH “Illegal aliens,” formed to assist libraries in making revisions to their own catalogues using alternatives to this Library of Congress Subject Heading. The report includes results from a survey conducted in September-October 2019 and recommendations from alternate vocabularies.
Adler, Melissa and Harper, Lindsey M. “Race and Ethnicity in Classification Systems: Teaching Knowledge Organization from a Social Justice Perspective.” Library Trends 67.1, (2018), 52-73.
Resource compiled by the Association of Moving Image Archivists.
Howard, Sarah A. and Knowlton, Steven A. “Browsing through Bias: The Library of Congress Classification and Subject Headings for African American Studies and LGBTQIA Studies.” Library Trends 67.1 (2018), 74-88.
Adler, Melissa. “Classification along the color line: Excavating racism in the stacks.” Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies 1.1 (2017).
Higgins, Molly. “Totally Invisible: Asian American Representation in the Dewey Decimal Classification, 1876–1996.” Knowledge Organization, 43.8 (2016), 609–621.
Furner, Jonathan. “Dewey Deracialized: A Critical Race-Theoretic Perspective.” Knowledge Organization 34.3 (2007), 144–68.
Littletree, Sandra and Cheryl Metoyer. “Knowledge Organization from an Indigenous Perspective: The Mashantucket Pequot Thesaurus of American Indian Terminology Project.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 53.5–6 (2015), 640–657.
British Columbia First Nations Subject Headings, XWI7XWA Library, First Nations House of Learning, University of British Columbia.
Created by Ethnic Studies Library, UC Berkeley.
An international LGBTQIA+ linked data vocabulary that began in 1982, produced by IHLIA LGBT Heritage in the Netherlands.
A list of various alternative vocabularies projects, created by Cataloging Lab.
A library-specific list created by Julie Hardesty that covers some of the most widely-used alternatives to LCSH, LCC, and the DDC.
Google Document guidance by Dawn Childress, Gretchen Gueguen, Julie Hardesty, Rebecca Pattillo, Erik Radio, and Lynette Rayle, helping heritage professionals to make decisions around controlled vocabularies. Updated April 2021.
Recorded presentation titled “Mitigating Bias Through Controlled Vocabularies” from the 2020 DLF Forum.
Hwang, Karen Li-Lun. “Minding and Mending the Gaps: A Case Study in Linked Open Data.” The Design for Diversity Learning Toolkit, Northeastern University Library, 2018.
2019 documentary film about a group of Dartmouth students who challenged anti-immigrant language in the Library of Congress subject headings.
Resource list on “Critical Cataloging and Classification” by Symphony Bruce, American University.
Idrees, Haroon. “Organization of Islamic Knowledge in Libraries: The Role of Classification Systems.” Library Philosophy and Practice 63.3 (2013), 98-117.
Duarte, Marisa Elena and Miranda Belarde-Lewis. “Imagining: Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies.” Cataloging and Classification Quarterly, 53.5-6 (2015), 677–702.
Created in the mid-1970s, the Brian Deer Classification System (BDC) is used to organise materials in libraries with specialised Indigenous collections.
Cherry, Alissa and Keshav Mukunda. “A Case Study in Indigenous Classification: Revisiting and Reviving the Brian Deer Scheme”.
Green, Rebecca. “Indigenous Peoples in the US, Sovereign Nations, and the DDC.” Knowledge Organization 42.4 (2015), 211–221.
Knowlton, Steven A. “Three Decades since Prejudices and Antipathies: A Study of Changes in the Library of Congress Subject Headings.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 40.2 (2005), 123–145.
Olson, Hope A. “Mapping beyond Dewey’s Boundaries: Constructing Classificatory Space for Marginalized Knowledge Domains.” Library Trends 47. 2 (1998), 233–254.
McKennon, Ed. “Importing Hegemony: Library Information Systems and US Hegemony in Canada and Latin America.” Radical History Review 95.95 (2006), 45–69.
Language Guidance
A glossary created by the American Jewish Community (AJC) to help individuals identify, expose, and report antisemitism.
A compilation of the latest resources on conscious language, designed for journalists.
Collaborative guide on terminology relating to the Atlantic Slave Trade, co-ordinated by P. Gabrielle Foreman.
Guidance on using terminology to describe Japanese American incarceration in the USA during the Second World War.
Preferred terminology guidance published by a Pan African human rights charity working to challenge Afriphobia in the British media (link may be expired).
UK Government guidance on words to use and avoid when writing about disability.
2016 blog post on “Indigenous Peoples terminology guidelines for usage”.
Project by Atria, Institute on gender equality and women’s history.
Guidelines produced by Barathy Rangarajan, Academy Software Foundation.
A glossary of historic terms used to refer to disability in England.
Internationally crowdsourced dictionary of gay and lesbian terms across 68 different languages.
Shopland, Norena. A Practical Guide to Searching LGBTQIA Historical Records. Routledge, 2020.
Project by Shelley Angelie Saggar that demystifies terms related to postcolonialism and decolonisation.
Guidance on racial slurs and racially offensive terminology produced by the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of English.
Media Reference Guide (11th edition) on LGBTQIA+ terminology by Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD).
A set of critical terms and questions designed to challenge discrimination within design fields.
USA-preferred guidance on disability language produced by the National Center on Disability and Journalism.
Glossary of Disability Terms, North Carolina Council on Developmental Disabilities.
Advisory Notices & Policy
Institutional statements
Catalogue-level warnings
Item-level warnings
Content filters
Codes of Ethics
American Association for State and Local History (AASLH). “Statement of Professional Standards and Ethics.” 2017.
Association of College & Research Libraries: A division of the American Library Association (ACRL). “Diversity Standards Toolkit.” 2013.
Association of College & Research Libraries: A division of the American Library Association (ACRL). “Diversity Standards Toolkit.” 2013.
IFLA. ‘IFLA Code of Ethics for Librarians and other Information Workers (full version).’ August 2012. Accessed 10 February 2020.
American Libraries Association (ALA). “Code of Ethics.” 2008.
Cataloging Ethics Steering Committee. Cataloguing Code of Ethics. January 2021.
Canadian Federation of Library Associations Fédération Canadienne des associations de bibliothèques. “Code of ethics.” August 2018.
CILIP: The library and information association. “Ethical framework.” 2018.
Society of American Archivists (SAA). ‘Statement of Principles.’ 2019.
Restitution & Repatriation
Savoy, Bénédicte. Africa’s Struggle for its Art: History of a Postcolonial Defeat. Translated by Susanne Meyer-Abich. Princeton University Press, 2022.
Tythacott, Louise and Panggah Ardiyansyah, editors. returning Southeast Asia’s past: Objects, Museums, and Restitution. National University of Singapore Press, 2021.
Treshani Perera’s article titled “Description Specialists and Inclusive Description Work and/or Initiatives—An Exploratory Study”.
Colwell, Chip. Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America’s Culture. University of Chicago Press, 2019.
A consortium of western museums in possession of Benin collections that are working to establish a permanent display of Benin artefacts in Benin City.
Hicks, Dan. The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution. Pluto Press, 2020.
Turnbull, Paul. Science, Museums and Collecting the Indigenous Dead in Colonial Australia. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
Working with the local Nigerian diaspora, Horniman Museum’s “Rethinking Relationships” initiative will work towards deciding the future of the Museum’s collection of Benin artefacts.
Accessibility
Guidelines on for Accessible Archives for People with Disabilities produced by the Society for America Archivists (SAA) in 2019.
National Disability Authority guidelines on creating accessible documents and resources.
USA-based resources by the Institute of Museum and Library Services intended to assist museums and libraries with increasing accessibility for all members of their communities.
Publication by the American Alliance of Museums, 2015.
Ways to improve and adapt teaching and resource-creation for people with visual impairments.
Blog post on ableism by Access Living.
Twitter account created Patrick M. Garvin that helps people to better understand web accessibility for people with disabilities.
A list of Accessibility resources for museums, galleries and heritage sites.
2022 MuseumsNext blog post by Goabaone Montsho on making museums accessible to those with disabilities.
SAA Access policies for Native American Archival Materials.
Colem Johnetta Betsch and Laura L. Lott, editors. Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion in Museums (American Alliance of Museums), 2019.
Blog post titled “Four Things I Learned When I Started Thinking about Museum Accessibility”, American Alliance of Museums.
Training & Professional Development
Jass Thethi provides a range of bespoke facilitated services for gallery, library, archive, and museum professionals in the UK. Courses include: Antiracism training; Decolonising the GLAM sector; Diversity, inclusion, and intersectionality training; Creating accessible conferences and meetings; Culturally sensitive descriptions; Empowered collaboration training; Transgender and gender variance training; Unconscious and implicit bias training.
The Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the American Library Association has over 1,000 members and run workshops relating to diversity issues.
In 2021, the Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights released “Ten standards for training from an anti-racist perspective” for the Public Sector.
USA-based Sofia Leung offers collaboratively developed workshops and trainings that employ anti-racist and anti-oppressive frameworks for educational institutions.
Podcast by Jass Thethi and Esther Lisk-Carew on topics of intersectional oppression within the GLAM sector.
Implicit biases tests provided by Harvard University.
Training produced by the Society of American Archivists (course may be expired).
Emotional Support
*Note that discourses on “self-care” are sometimes ableist in their rhetoric. Self-care must itself, be accessible and inclusive.
Self-care for Museum Professionals with Seema Rao, Deputy Director and Chief Experience Officer, Akron Art Museum, and author of “Objective Lessons: Self Care for Museum Workers”. In this talk, Rao discusses how museum workers can practice self-care as well as foster a healthier, more productive, and more creative work environment.
NHS mental health services for LGBTQIA+ people experiencing mental health difficulties.
General guidance on handling homophobic and transphobic discrimination in the UK workplace.
Mental health resources compiled by Western Museums Association.
Resources by Oklahoma Museums Association.
A series of emotional support resources and exercises for archival professionals preparing to work with disturbing material.
Articles by Tim Deakin titled “How can museums improve their staff wellbeing?”, “Supporting museum staff in a trauma infused world”, and “In conversation with: Louise Thompson, Health and Wellbeing Manager, Manchester Art Gallery”.
UK publication by National Alliance for Museums, Health and Wellbeing, promoting museums as spaces in which to create a healthier population.
Erdman, Sarah C. The Care and Keeping of Museum Professionals. Amazon Digital Services, 2019.
Racism and racial discrimination can negatively affect your physical and mental health. Regardless of your previous awareness, you may find yourself struggling to process your reactions to current and/or past experiences of racism and racial discrimination — reflecting an experience known as racial trauma. Information from Hawkeye Community College on racial trauma and resources to foster resilience and healthy coping.
Our ongoing commitment to actively think about and take action against racism, combined with a sense of urgency and deep caring, adds pressure and stress to our daily lives. The emotional impact of this work is real, therefore it is vital that we all practice “self-care” to benefit our overall health and quality of life. Guidance put together by the National Museum of African American History and Culture (USA).
Advice on “Combatting Burnout in the Museum Sector” by the American Alliance of Museums, published in response to Covid-19.
An article recognising the emotional impacts that working with particular archives can have on archivists, including secondary trauma, compassion fatigue, and burnout.
Tips on coping with exposure to disturbing imagery guidance by British Red Cross psychosocial and mental health team. This guidance was used by Manchester Together Archive, and should be available upon request.
Liberthal, Lacey. “Engaging with Empathy: Staff Support for Emotionally-Charged Exhibitions.” Theory and Practice 1 (2018).
MuseumNext article by Tim Deakin promoting Mental Health First Aid in Museums as an essential post-Covid strategy.
Decolonisation & Anti-Racism
The Ahmed Iqbal Ullah RACE (Race Archives and Community Engagement) Centre is a specialist community-centred library focusing on the study of race, migration and ethnic diversity.
A project creating Britain’s first museum celebrating Black British history, art and culture.
Chilcott, Alicia et al. “Against Whitewashing: The Recent History of Anti-Racist Action in the British Archives Sector.” International Journal of Information, Diversity and Inclusion 5.1 (2021)
Project promoting partnership with the Maasai communities in Tanzania and Kenya to foreground indigenous knowledge to enable the Pitts Rivers Museum in Oxford to address its colonial history in a responsible way.
Blog by Nathan Sentance (@SaywhatNathan on Twitter) discussing issues relating to Indigenous marginalisation in Australian archives.
Caswell, Michelle. “Teaching to Dismantle White Supremacy in Archives.” The Library Quarterly 87.3(2017), 222-235.
Murawski, Mike. Museums as Agents of Change: A Guide to Becoming a Changemaker. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2021.
Bristol Museums archive documenting the links between Britain and countries in the British Empire from the late 19th century to recent times.
An archive documenting the British Anti-Apartheid Movement and its campaigns to support the people of South Africa in their fight against apartheid.
A list of Indigenous heritage projects in North America.
Liverpool Museums project designed to increase the understanding of transatlantic, chattel, and other forms of slavery.
A joint UK-Kenyan initiative founded to creatively communicate a more truthful account of British colonialism.
Scale, Mark-Shane. Colonization and Imperialism in Libraries: Perspective from a Caribbean Immigrant. FriesenPress, 2021.
A pilot web site for research resources relating to Caribbean Studies and the history of Black and Asian peoples in the UK.
Centre at UCL are working on various Black history research projects including “Queering Black Britain”, “Black Londoners 1800-1900”, and “Ideas of African sculpture“.
2021 exhibition by the Bishop Museum in Honolulu that explicitly exposes the myth of “race” and redresses the Museum’s historic involvement in the development of eugenics. Working with the descendants of the Kanaka Maoli, the Bishop Museum has repurposed Louis R. Sullivan’s collections.
A collection of family histories and migration histories documented by young people in the UK.
An oral history archive documenting the experiences and stories of Roma people from Eastern and Central Europe who live in London.
Canadian project “dedicated to activating and remediating audiovisual archives created by Indigenous Peoples (First Nations, Métis, Inuit), the Black community and People of Colour, women, LGBT2Q+ and immigrant communities”.
Project that investigates the relationship between Britain and Somaliland in the colonial era, with focus on Liverpool.
Sleeper-Smith, Susan, editor. Contesting Knowledge: Museums and Indigenous Perspectives. Nebraska Press, 2007.
A student-led collaborative research project at the University of Edinburgh focused on uncovering the University’s colonial and imperial legacies.
Two Glasgow Women’s Library projects, one of which creates opportunities for BME women, and the other of which seeks to document how intra-Christian sectarianism affects women in diverse communities.
A collective of “writers, editors, artists, curators, librarians, and archivists who publish and produce collaborative projects about artists, archival practice, art history, and culture in the occupied lands known as Chicago and the Midwest.”
Resources by Archives for black Lives in Philadelphia.
Shellman, Cecile. Effective Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, Inclusion, and Anti-Racism Practices for Museums: From the Inside Out (American Alliance of Museums), Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2022.
Network for people of colour working in cultural heritage.
A list of resources and African American heritage projects in the USA, compiled by the Colored Conventions Project.
Black Lives Matter Charter for the UK Cultural Heritage Sector published by Culture&.
Mailing list for news and opportunities relating to decolonisation in UK education and research communities.
Catlin-Legutko, Cinnamon and Chris Taylor, editors. The Inclusive Museum Leader. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2021.
Leung, Sofia Y. and Jorge R. López-McKnight, editors. Knowledge Justice: Disrupting Library and Information Studies through Critical Race Theory. The MIT Press, 2021.
University of Minnesota’s Library guide on “Conducting research through an anti-racism lens”.
USA-based Google discussion group dedicated to tackling racism issues in the American archive sector.
Museums Associations campaign to support initiatives to decolonise museums and their collections.
Searchable Ancestry.com database of former slave owners in British colonial dependencies.
Searchable UCL database tracing slave-ownership in Britain, including maps showing the addresses of individuals who received compensation for their “loss of human property” after 1837.
Project researching historic African collections held in Sussex and Kent museums with the aim of furthering both conceptual and applied debates over the decolonial futures of colonial collections.
A three-year project by LSE and the University of Cambridge to document the stories of people who left Bengal in the wake of Indian Independence in 1947.
The only national British heritage centre in dedicated to collecting, preserving and celebrating the histories of African and Caribbean people in Britain.
A digital archive preserving South Asian and Muslim heritage in Scotland.
Project exhibiting the dispersal of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic world.
Academic-led organisation in Oxford dedicated to raising awareness about the “uncomfortable” aspects of history and their impact today.
Searchable UCL database tracing slave-ownership in Britain, including maps showing the addresses of individuals who received compensation for their “loss of human property” after 1837.
The Migration Museum explores how the movement of people to and from Britain across the ages has made us who we are – as individuals and as a nation.
Raicovich, Laura. Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest. Verso, 2021.
Procter, Alice. The Whole Picture: The colonial story of the art in our museums & why we need to talk about it. Octopus Publishing Group, 2020.
Lincolnshire based museum that features the results of decades of collection and curation by Mr. Gordon Boswell.
South Asian American Digital Archive, “a community-based culture change organization ensuring that South Asian Americans are included in the American story: past, present, and future.”
Livingstone Online project focused on recovering non-European contributions from nineteenth-century British imperial and colonial archives.
A collaborative 4-year project with the University of Exeter and AHRC focused on methodologies of egalitarian archiving practice that allows for co-existence and recognition of multiple experiences and narratives of the past.
The National Archives UK’s research guide for its Black and Minority Ethnic history collections.
Gender & Sexuality
The LGBTI+ heritage organization of the Netherlands and home to the largest LGBTI+ collection in Europe.
Partnership project with Glasgow Women’s Library and the International Festival of Visual Arts with the aim to reveal hidden “herstories”.
A charity working to establish the UK’s first national LGBTQIA+ museum.
An LGBTQIA+ Oral History project based at London Metropolitan Archives.
LGBTQ+ histories object trail at the British Museum.
Sheffield, Rebecca Taves. Documenting Rebellions: A Study of Four Lesbian and Gay Archives in Queer Times. Litwin Books & Library Juice Press, 2020.
Adair, Joshua G. and Amy K. Levin, editors. Museums, Sexuality, and Activism. Taylor & Francis, 2020.
Sullivan, Nikki and Craig Middleton. Queering the Museum. Routledge, 2020.
The Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies is the largest LGBTQ-specific archival repository in the upper Midwest, USA.
The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) Archive at UNT is a collaborative project to document the history and culture of the LGBTQ communities in the South and the Southwest USA.
Gynaecological museum designed to erase the stigma around female anatomy, to challenge heteronormative and cisnormative behaviour, and provide a forum for feminism, women’s rights, the LGBT+ community, and the intersex community.
Holds collections on women’s movements, organisations and campaigns in Northern England and beyond.
Funded project by Northeast Wales Archive to work with Theatre Clwyd to create monologue-style films retelling rousing stories of women from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.
Kevin Guyan’s Queer Data: Using Gender, Sex and Sexuality Data for Action shows us how current data practices reflect an incomplete account of LGBTQ lives and helps us understand how data biases are used to delegitimise the everyday experiences of queer people.
The Museum of Transology (MoT) is the UK’s most significant collection of objects representing trans, non-binary and intersex people’s lives. Each object donated to the Museum of Transology has a brown swing tag attached to it, with a hand written message explaining its significance to the owner. This means both the story and the object are archived as two parts of a whole, never to be erased or overwritten.
UCL project that seeks to uncover, document and make visible Black LGBTQIA+ histories within British history.
US-based archive designed to increase the accessibility of transgender history by providing an online hub for digitised historical materials, born-digital materials, and information on archival holdings throughout the world.
The Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Community Archives is the London Metropolitan Archives’ collection on LGBTQIA+ histories.
A National Trust project exploring LGBTQIA+ history.
Wexelbaum, Rachel. queers online. Litwin Books & Library Juice Press, 2015.
The Lesbian Herstory Archives was created in the 1970s by a group of women involved in the Gay Academic Union. It is the world’s largest collection of materials related to lesbians and their communities.
The only Accredited Museum in the UK dedicated to women’s lives, histories and achievements.
Heritage Fund Scotland funded project by Empower Women for Change. Supporting Glasgow’s BME refugee, asylum seeking, and new migrant women to access heritage.
Specialist library at LSE.
Accardi, Maria T., editor. The Feminist Reference Desk: Concepts, Critiques, and Conversations. Litwin Books & Library Juice Press, 2017.
Douglas, Veronica Arellano and Joanna Gadsby, editors. Deconstructing Service in Libraries: Intersections of Identities and Expectations. Litwin Books & Library Juice Press, 2020.
Disability
Based on the site of the UK’s oldest residential psychiatric hospital, Bethlem Royal Hospital, this museum tells the history of mental healthcare through an internationally renowned collection of archives, art and historic objects.
Hosts a Library of virtual artefacts, educational curricula, and museum exhibits designed to foster research and study about the historical experiences of people with disabilities and their communities.
Schalk, Sami. Black Disability Politics. Duke University Press, 2022.
Cultural space in Madrid devoted to the exhibition of artistic works and typhlological material (tools, gadgets, and specific aids for blind and visually-impaired people, models, etc.), which can be felt through the sense of touch.
New York based museum, currently closed in-person but available to explore virtually.
2008 University of Leicester report on “Rethinking Disability Representation in Museums and Galleries”, which acknowledges that museums and galleries play a role in informing the ways in which people think about disability and understand disabled peoples’ lives.
Archive at the University of Leeds hosted by the Centre for Disability Studies designed to provide disabled people, students and scholars with an interest in this and related fields, access to the writings of those disability activists, writers and allies whose work may no longer be easily accessible in the public domain.
Museum in South West Yorkshire that houses a remarkable collection of mental health-related objects that span the history of mental health care, from the early 19th century through to the present day.
Sandell, Richard, Jocelynn Dodd, and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, editors. Re-presenting Disability: activism and agency in the museum. Routledge, 2010.
Glasgow Women’s Library blog post by Jennifer Robinson on challenges and assumptions about women’s disabilities.
2020 blog post on disability research in the British Museum collection, telling a story of disability history through six objects.
Working Class Heritage
List of working class history archives compiled by the Society for the Study of Labour History.
BBC Archive dedicated to documenting the roots of British working class traditions.
A community driven social justice museum in London, created and run by people with direct experience of homelessness.
2022 opinion piece titled “Museums are failing to address working class experiences”, by Serena Iervolino and Domenico Sergi.
Sustainability
Environmental Resources for Libraries and Librarians by CILIPS.
Museums & Climate Change Network is a group of professionals who are concerned with extending and improving communication on the Anthropocene.
International Council of Museums (ICOM) article on “Reimagining and Mobilising Museums for Climate Action” exhibition at Glasgow Science Centre.
American Libraries Association (ALA) initiative piloted 2020-2021: “Resilient Communities: Libraries Respond to Climate Change”.
2022 BBC article on “Why Climate Change is Inherently Racist”.
2020 interview with Elizabeth Yeampierre titled “Unequal Impact: The Deep Links Between Racism and Climate Change”. Written by Beth Gardiner.
Reimagining Museums for Climate Action at the Glasgow Science Centre (2021) presents a range of new, creative ideas in response to the challenges of the climate emergency, with exhibits from all over the world, including the United States, Singapore, Brazil and the UK.
Western Museums Association article by Ferdinando Adorno on “Museums in the Age of Climate Change”.
CHTNUK 