As part of the 2025 Truth and Reconciliation events, the Brock Library hosted a discussion of reconciliation work as it applies in the context of library metadata.
Since the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Report in 2015, libraries in Canada have been hard at work implementing the Calls to Action related to memory institutions (C.T.A. 79). One particular area of concern is metadata: the descriptions which represent material in a library’s collections and allow it to be searched for and discovered. Metadata can, and often does contain outdated and harmful terminology.
What are libraries doing to address these problems and move to language which is inclusive and respectful of the communities, people, and knowledge represented in them? What are some of the challenges of this work? In this presentation, Brock Metadata Librarian, John Dingle shared the Library’s harmful metadata remediation strategy for the general collection, while David Sharron, University Archivist spoke about this work in the context of the Archives and Special Collections.
View the presentation on YouTube.
Duration: 1 hour
Or explore new options for developing your list yourself! You can reuse an existing course reading list from a course previously supported through the Ares platform, or create a brand new list from scratch!