The last five years have seen a rapid increase in projects and initiatives intended to address long-known ethical issues within descriptive practices in libraries. Many initiatives focus on harmful, discriminatory language found in a controlled vocabulary. Such projects have engaged in justice-focused or reparative work by developing alternate Library of Congress terms or developing new structured vocabularies for use within catalogue systems. However, just when the struggle to create ethical and just practices within library description seems to be making strides, threats to progress are looming.
This talk will examine challenges to continuing the work toward just practice presented in three streams: the political, economic, and the growing use of artificial intelligence tools within the library field; this talk will discuss the ways structured data is even more important.
This event is co-sponsored by the W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics.
Stacy Allison-Cassin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Science at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, Stacy engages in teaching and research related to knowledge organization, and metadata and issues related to equity and justice. Stacy co-leads the Mellon-funded Respectful Terminology Platform Project alongside Camille Callison. She is the chair of the Teaching and Learning community of the National Indigenous Knowledge and Language Association, and Indigenous-led association centered in Canada and serves on several other committees, boards, and advisory bodies. A Citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario, Stacy has kinship connections to the Georgian Bay Métis community.
Registration
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