The Case for Record Remediation at the Lesbian Herstory Archives

I will discuss my experience as the Lesbian Herstory Archives Fellow and how I built upon the — Cataloging Manual which myself and two other colleagues, Emilee Buytkinz and Emily Kokotajlo, created for our Special Projects in Digital Archives class — all in an effort to practice transparency, accountability, and radical empathy in archival work.

These transparent cataloging guidelines offer a way for us student archivists to hold each other accountable for cataloging decisions, to improve our metadata collection and presentation, and to communicate our priorities, all across space and time. It also provides route for patrons to better understand how collections are organized and communicates that we as archivists want patrons, who may be a part of the community that this archive represents, involved in the cataloging experience.

Record remediation, whether it is undertaken alongside other archival work as records are occasionally revisited, or if it is undertaken as a project in-and-of itself, is an exercise in radical empathy and a commitment to representing records, their creators, and their subjects as authentically as possible.

View the LHA Cataloging Manual here: https://herstories.prattinfoschool.nyc/omeka/cataloging-manual

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Meg Carroll

Meg Carroll is a Library and Information Science graduate student at Pratt Institute's School of Information. She is set to graduate in May 2025. She has an undergraduate background in English and Art History from the College of Charleston. In coming to Pratt and acquiring a Library Science degree, she hoped to find a way to combine both her love of research and learning with the arts. Since beginning the Library Science program, Meg has held archival internships at Paula Cooper Gallery and the Lesbian Herstory Archive. Currently, she is the archival intern at the Academy of American Poets. These positions have allowed her to develop her archival senses, and taught her the value of her education at Pratt Institute. The webpages on this website include projects completed in pursuit of her Master's Degree in Library Science and the Archives Certificate.

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• The Case for Record Remediation at the Lesbian Herstory Archives - April 29, 2025