Reparative Metadata

This guide is intended to serve as a resource for considering how to approach certain subjects with a decolonial, reparative paradigm. It is not comprehensive.

Each section has been created in conjunction with student researchers. Written as part of an upper-division course, these sections consider the historical, institutional, cultural, and political dimensions of naming, classification, and memory.

Reparative metadata, at its core, is an approach to re-describing materials in a way that more accurately reflects the contents of those materials.

In galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs), this can mean a number of things:

1. Explicit acknowledgement of how something was acquired (e.g. through theft of native/local artifacts)
2. Warnings about certain kinds of content
3. Identification of specific biases and/or misrepresentations (e.g. stereotypes, dehumanization)
4. Addition of more current, community-informed language

The purpose of reparative metadata is neither censorship nor condemnation. The point of reparative metadata is not necessarily to say "This book uses bad words" or "This author is racist/sexist/homophobic/etc." Rather, the point is to more accurately inform: to let individuals know what they may expect when encountering these materials, to give them the power to engage in informed consent about what they encounter, and to more fully contextualize the material and its contents in ways that aid research and learning.