Guiding Principles

The Bentley Historical Library advocates for broadening access to archival collections related to historically marginalized and underrepresented groups and stands against further marginalization, oppression, and bias in the way our legacy collections are arranged and described. As such, processors:

• Are guided by the Bentley's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion strategic plan (public link) and Statement on Potentially Harmful Language and Content (public link). 

• Use a variety of industry-recognized inclusive and reparative guidelines and thesauri, as well as other resources like the American Psychological Association's Bias-Free Language guidelines (public link), in their work.

Processors therefore work in accordance with principles that have been drawn from these resources (particularly Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia's publicly accessible Anti-Racist Description Resources):

• Archival work, structures, and systems are not neutral.

• Processors must balance the original content and description with an awareness of problematic language and context that may come with it.

• Processors must recognize not only the biases they bring to their work, but also the limits of their knowledge, especially about communities that they are not part of.

• Processors approach each collection with not only cultural sensitivity for the creators and/or subjects of archival records, but also awareness of the power imbalances that are reflected in records' content, organization, titles, captions, and other original description.

• Archival description is an ongoing process and all description—regardless of age—is subject to critical re-evaluation and remediation.