Appendix F
Flagging potentially sensitive and offensive material.
In support of the work of Inclusive Collections, the inventory team have agreed where possible to flag material (both catalogued and uncatalogued) that may be potentially sensitive or offensive. Sensitivity and offensiveness are very subjective but loosely flagging content as ‘potential’ is an attempt at grouping material that requires further work, an advisory notice, considerations for cataloguing or investigation outside of the inventory project.
Content to prioritise or flag includes racist and culturally sensitive material, discriminatory and derogatory imagery and language, human remains, collections with unclear or disputed provenance, objects or images decontextualized in a way that is offensive to the originating culture and representations of individuals – particularly from colonised communities.
Other considerations for material that is not contextualised or signposted by a description or title include gore, bodily fluids, surgery, sexually explicit content, corpses, people in severe pain or distress, animal cruelty and experimentation, graphic drug use and death and dying.
As a medical collection it is assumed that a large proportion of the collections will include material as categorised above. The material we may flag as part of the inventory are for content that may be found in an unexpected manner by the user or need contextualising to prepare the user for the content they will see and are not intended to be in anyway patronising. An example of this would be if the search term ‘contraception’ was used in the catalogue with an expectation to see content related to sexual health, contraceptive methods or promotion etc and it returned multiple posters whereby individuals are visible in explicit sex acts – perhaps not expected. Some of the posters whereby there is sexually explicit content need to have this signposted in the brief description, title or even subject tag – if a poster denotes nudity, sex etc this acts as a precursor to the material content. If the user is searching for content related to ‘surgery’ or ‘medical experimentation’ for example, then it would be assumed to a degree they would be aware that some of the material they might discover would not be for the faint-hearted.
For catalogued material, it is not just the visual iconography that may be problematic, rather it could be the language or terminology used by the cataloguer to describe the content. Where possible we will also flag items as ‘potentially sensitive’ if there is some work to do around altering or considering language choice in the records. This may also be noted as metadata enhancement in Quickbase with a very brief explanation. Where problematic language has been transcribed from a title we will still flag this as ‘potentially sensitive’ in Quickbase.
Whilst in stores, we will on occasion take photographs of works to support identifying them more easily. We will also take images of works that may be sensitive and attach these to records in Quickbase for further discussion with Inclusive Collections and wider colleagues. This will act as a sample of the types of material the inventory is flagging.
It is accepted that material flagged as part of the inventory is not conclusive or set in stone, and it is also likely that material that is sensitive or offensive may be omitted. The inventory team are aware that we will have our own bias and experiences as individuals when processing material that may impact on what we deem to be sensitive or offensive, despite the guidance above.
However, grouping or highlighting material at this level is an investigatory opportunity to discover the likely proportion of the visual material and pre-1851 books that need consideration for how this is presented in our catalogues and digitised content online and will interrogate considerations on current and future practices regarding our duty of care.
Material flagged in both Quickbase and Sierra can be grouped and shared as reports with colleagues who are also supporting the work of Inclusive Collections.
Assessing Sensitivity of visual material: decision-making chart
Encounters with sensitive and offensive material during inventory
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