Johns Hopkins Libraries are committed to fostering a welcoming environment. As part of this commitment, our staff continuously works to review and remediate descriptive language and terminology within our catalog records. For instance, a staff interest group works to identify and replace subject headings where:
As we work to improve the language in the catalog, we acknowledge the presence of outdated and inaccurate language remaining within our records. The catalog records that describe our library resources have been created by a wide variety of people, internal and external to Hopkins, over the course of the past several decades. With an ever-growing collection of several million library resources dating from antiquity to the present day, variance in records’ origin sources and dates of creation means that our catalog records may contain outdated or incorrect language. This language may come from institutional and individual biases, but also from national descriptive standards and rules, which dictate terminology for aspects of the record like subjects and classification. While Johns Hopkins Library staff periodically review our records and select subjects for remediation, these processes do not always match the pace of changing public perspective and awareness due to the volume of material and work required to make updates.
Library staff are engaged in ongoing, sustained efforts to remediate language within our records and within the wider library community. If you encounter any outdated or offensive language within the catalog, please report it by submitting a Catalyst Issue Reporter form.