"In Conversation With...." Discusses Reparative Description/Conscious Editing

By Anne Ackerson posted 07-11-2022 02:01 PM

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Valencia Johnson, Princeton University

Dawne Howard Lucas, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

Reparative description/conscious editing is the topic of this edition of "In Conversation With..." featuring Valencia Johnson, Archivist for Student Life at Princeton University’s Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, and Dawne Howard Lucas, Technical Services Archivist for Collection Management at the Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

There’s been a quickening drumbeat around the topic of reparative description/conscious editing/ethical description, but the fact of the matter is these aren’t simply buzzwords that have happened to capture our professional attention in recent years. It’s clear that this critical work is not an activity that an institution just jumps into. It is intentional activity that requires commitment from archives leadership and institutional resources, and must be grounded in the institution’s values. We discussed the unfolding landscape of reparative description, also called conscious editing or ethical description – a topic of great interest to many CoSA members, as well as to the larger archives, library, and museum fields. In fact, conscious editing was the topic of CoSA’s monthly webinar in May 2021 with Dawne and two of her colleagues (and you can find the recording in CoSA’s YouTube channel). You can also find all of our “In Conversation With” recordings at the CoSA YouTube channel, as well.

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