Alright, hi everybody. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Bethan Ray. I'm the digital collections management librarian here at Penn State University Libraries. I do work out of the library here. And today we are Address we are going to be talking about addressing potentially harmful content in our digital collections. But before we get started. I did want to do a little bit of an introduction because the digital curation community practice this is because of a snow delay last month this is actually our first Virtual event for the year and some of you folks might be new to this community practice or this you're attending your first session. So, basically I just wanted to let you guys know kind of the scope of what we do here. So the digital creation community of practice is designed to be a venue for discussions about collections management and outreach activities. Digital library resources. So this could be anything from digitized library archival collections. Purchased licensed open access electronic resources made available digitally, research data, and other born digital materials. So we discuss everything from preservation, access, research, instructional uses, and other best practices as it's kind of related to the lifecycle of digital content. Okay, so, so really we won't address all of these topics in a single in a single session or anything like that. Today we will definitely be focusing on digitized material and access and at least for the example that I'm going to be giving out of the digital collections here at Penn State. But these are topics are open. You know, for discussion at any point of the year, we try to create andas that do change over time so that we make sure that we're addressing all areas over a given year. So with that in mind. Wanted to let folks know that we are actually putting out a call. To invite people to join our steering committee. And if anybody is interested, we just recommend contacting the digital creation community practice co-chairs. So, Jacob Gordon at Penn State Altuna is one of our co-chairs and community practice co-chairs. So, Jacob Gordon at Penn, to practice co chairs. So, Jacob Gordon at Penn State, Altoona is one of our co chairs this year as well as myself. So email is perfectly fine. Like I said, you can just let us know if you're interested and we'd love to have you for the community practice, you know, this is open to staff, faculty, anybody within the university library system that's interested in these topics, no matter what your level of expertise is. All right, next so I figured that to get started we would just you know I would just kind of give a brief statement about what potentially harmful content is. And there's lots of different places that you can go and look and find variations of the statement that I included here, you know, or various interpretations of a statement that I included here. So, you know, ALA, I'm sure SAA has a similar thing. You know, different institutions write their own definitions of it. So, and especially within the BTA, which we are a member of. But, because of some material in later in my presentation is based off of the digital public library of America's statement on potentially harmful content. I figured that it would be best to kind of start with some source material. I figured that it would be best to kind of start with some potentially harmful content. I figured that it would be best to kind of start with some source material that has been used as part of this program. So with that in mind, some material, some of the materials presented here may reflect outdated biased offensive, possibly violent views and opinions. Due to persuasive systematic intolerance. And remember this is Cultural heritage institutions have been collecting and preserving materials related to these kind of things for decades and years. And they can also contain materials that are violent graphic in nature but the goal is to still preserve them for their historical context and significance. Alright, so. Potentially harmful content has been something that has really popped up, I would say, in more recent years, especially with our, 2020 to 2025 library strategic plan. The reason for that is that as part of the library strategic plan, we've a lot of different departments have really taken a look at how we're just describing materials and that can be in you know in archive space that can be in our open access resources that can be in the catalog, you know, and that's also in this case including the digital collections. And for that really just also with highlighting more diverse collections and more underrepresented groups and also more contemporary groups in history. There can be more privacy concerns related to that as well. So in the case of the digital collections, I've just outlined a few goals that I've been thinking about as I've developed. And worked with colleagues to develop ways to address potentially harmful content. So first is really the whole idea of being clear and direct when describing content within a given digital collection. You know, making sure that when you provide statements or notices that. You're giving you know the best and simplified description of what somebody may find when they go exploring. A given collection. Acknowledgement that our best practices now. For representation of material. Are not going to be our best practices in 3, 4, 5, maybe even one year. So Just acknowledging that we'll always be changing and improving. When we, when we can, we always really, this is something that I think is very important. We try to avoid censorship and definitely try to avoid changing the historic record. Because we want to provide. Our communities with accurate source material. And sometimes it can, you know, it can be hard to, you know, remain neutral and not have your own opinions on certain content, but. I know really working with those subject experts who know the content the best and working with communities that the content is representing can really help you. In achieving that particular goal. And like I said, while, This is not necessarily the same thing as harmful content always. Be mindful of privacy because a lot of times those can align and overlap in gray areas. So I will touch a little bit upon with an example related to privacy in this. Presentation a little bit. And then also providing users method, a method or methods to provide feedback. To whatever system or whatever, you know, whatever system or whatever platform that you're using. Okay, so, like I said, getting started. The first thing that. You know, I've really thought about and we didn't necessarily Do this. Myself, members of the digital project team. We didn't necessarily do this in the exact order that I have written here at least for this first section. But what are the needs of your collection so thinking about a program statement and maybe who those potential collaborators might be for a program statement. Thinking about any incoming projects, collections or requests that you might have. As well as thinking about review of material that has been out there and available for a long time thinking about how can we clean this material up. So doing those collection reviews. And then next is thinking about developing your institutional standards. So what are the resources and systems you have? What are their functionalities? And thinking that thinking about resources in a variety of ways, like what type of funding, what type of expansion, what type of staff do you have? What type of expertise do you have on staff? Cause maybe like here at Penn State, we're very lucky that we have a lot of different types of resources and a lot of people with different subject expertise. But you know, maybe we, and but we certainly don't have it all. So thinking about looking at your peer institutions to not reinvent the wheelchair institutions to not reinvent the wheel, so thinking about looking at your peer institutions to not reinvent the wheel, thinking about. Looking maybe at already established standards and adapting those to meet the needs of your institution. So for us, I started looking at. Certain types of achievable match marks so that can be the one specific thing in this case, I would think is definitely for, me is thinking about review cycles and how often Do we think we can either look at a given collection or how many collections? Do we think that we can look at or review or? Concentrate on in a given year. Potentially. Then areas of growth and development. So also recognizing those weaknesses in your program and recognizing what could potentially be better, also recognizing how you can help. Others around you. Either with their departments with their programs with their collections. And then trying to get those ideas. Into action. So like I said, I will have some examples here of how we have gotten these. These different ideas and methods into action, but keeping in mind that by presenting this. To everybody in the community that The goal is to get feedback, to get ideas, let people know, oh, I saw this example here and it'd be great if we could try this at Penn State. Okay. Does everybody see my next slide? I know it's not gonna be easy to read and that's fine. All right, so Linda, for this slide, would you mind dropping, the link to that draft statement into the chat for me? Great. Thank you. Okay, so as I said, really one of the first steps might be to hopefully. Have some sort of, program statement for your for your institution for your collections. So what I have here is actually a screenshot of a draft statement. And what you're gonna click on in the, what you're going to click on in the, what you're gonna click on in the, what you're gonna click on in the, what you're gonna click on in the, what you're gonna click on in the link that was put in the chat is something slightly different. And the reason why I'll tell you that is because this is in the chat is something slightly different. And the reason why I'll tell you that is because this is in development and the reason why I will tell you that is because this is in development and I will kind of share the details of how this came about. So as part of the digital projects team. We really wanted to start working on a statement for potentially harmful content. As a way to address what material, what different types of materials are in our collections. And sort of like an overarching summary with a Q&A and an ability to also report, report harmful content that books might think is not being addressed, appropriately or report. Materials that maybe they think could be better described and allowing us to get that. And as I said, so this was. Adapted and developed. From the digital public library of America's statement that they have on their website. So if you go and look at their, like I said, it's very similar, but the language was adjusted to meet the needs of Penn State. Now, for this, the language that I used or I tried to use, The goal was to fit digital collections across the university library. So not just the materials in UP, at UP or in special collections, but also thinking about the subject libraries thinking about our Commonwealth campuses. And I think overall it was a pretty good start, but, One thing that ended up happening is that there was another group. Working on a similar statement, but it was specifically addressing the same issue, but in the libraries catalog. And their statement was also very specific to the work that was being done in the catalog in the history of the catalog. So what you are gonna find in the linked draft is a fresh new idea where we've taken this work. In this research and combined it so that we can present a, a web page that will have a unified voice for the libraries. And this was something that you the libraries administration brought to my attention brought to Elizabeth Hilbert's attention. So we worked on this draft and we've started sharing it out to different communities. So, It went to the digital projects team. It went to DLC. It went to library administration. It went to the stakeholders that were working on the draft for the catalog. And now it's coming to you guys here. So we've really done a lot of work to try and fed it in different areas and get this work to, you know, get this work to have an exposure so we can really fulfill that idea of having a unified voice. On this topic and with that being said putting the material on a university library's webpage with the goal that since this is our unified voice on the topic, anybody that needs to reference or link to this page can do so for their needs. So in the case of the digital collections. The goal is to not only reference this statement on the collections page, but also to have a banner at the top of the digital collections. Page with a flag that can take you directly to the full statement so that it's there and visible. To everybody that is entering the you know entering the digital collections maybe from our main page so like I said, please feel free to take some time. To read that. This work is still ongoing with, myself and Elizabeth kind of leading the way and, you know, working with and coordinating with implemented and put on the libraries web page. You know, this spring so that That is a goal of ours. Oh, and I guess one other thing I want to mention is the reason why we're not quite done yet is after we had another feedback session, there was other groups that are working on similar work, other tasks force, other groups that are doing similar work. Some with Addressing Our call. Elections, other addressing. Different topics related to exhibitions at the libraries and so we want to make sure that we meet and coordinate with those groups once again to get that unified voice. Sorry, there we go. Okay, slides advancing now. All right. So this portion of my presentation, this is really where I want to go and start talking about, some of those incoming project requests that we've had more recently, some of those collection review, projects that we had recently and give you some examples beyond that program statement of how We are addressing harmful content right now. And at the University of libraries. So I do have, some links here, and there is a link to my slides in our notes. So if you want to pop around and look at any of these things you absolutely can but I tried to give screenshots so that I could stay on the slides and not bounce around. With my screen sharing today. But so one of our first examples, and this is really why I say we didn't get the program statement out first. Part of the digital projects team, we were working on the Black Hills. Visual culture. This is a relatively new cold. That really started with the work of Petri screen who has since left the library but has continued with a variety of faculty screen who has since left the library but has continued with a variety of faculty and staff in special collections, but has continued with a variety of faculty and staff in special collections, and continues to grow to this day with plans for a variety of faculty and staff in special collections, and continues to grow to this day with plans for further additions. But this collection highlighting black history in the United States and at Penn State, has right now has 6 active content warnings. So content warnings are what what we do when we build a digital collection and we flag a given object or a different item. For really very very specific reasons and what happens when you do a content warning or a flag like this is that, when you go to that item. In its webpage, you get this kind of blurred image with a notice above it that says the following item, content may be upsetting. And if you read through the metadata and you decide that you still want to see you the material, you just. Click through and it'll show you the item as is. Okay. So one of the examples that we have of those 6 is, the adventures of black Eldridge, which is a comic book. But I can tell you that for all of these items and for most of the collections where we've kind of done this work so far, we've only used these content warnings and flags for bodily harm in you know, pretty much kind of extreme examples of violence. So things that are really, really difficult to UN see once you see them. And we really haven't taken it farther than that. And the goal of having. And the goal of having, this. Statement for potentially harmful content and to have also an example you'll see later statements on collection landing pages like additional notices on collection landing pages are to avoid stepping over the line into that area of censorship. Once again, like I said, that is not a goal. So this is probably one of our more extreme examples of handling harmful content. It still can be used when it needs to be, but the goal is to use it sparingly. So like I said, you'll see very small numbers has have go through the example. So for this one collection that has well over a hundred digital objects, there are 6. Alright, so. And so for the next example I have, it's from the gender sexual identity and expression collection. This is a slightly different. Category here, but something that I did want to note. So for this collection, there actually is no material that has been marked for one of those content warnings of those flags that I just showed you. But instead what ended up happening is some of the material that was originally put in the digital project proposal and selected for digitization. Ended up being removed from the proposal due to privacy concerns. These were long discussions that were with the subject expert, with the proposing, you know, of the project to kind of really think. Through what the material was, what the background was that we knew of the material. Research to make sure that we were doing our due diligence to, you know, think about the privacy of the subject or the person that is being represented in that material that was hosted as part of the digital collection. So for this particular project, the 2 reasons why some materials were left out were for lack of provenance. So like I said, not really being able to prove that the folks that were represented in that material. Would be comfortable knowing. That the items were put out publicly and into the open for anybody to find and see. And then the second reason we had is there was some material that we found where consent to have published their published photographs or to be included in like more of an article publication. Wasn't really. You. You know, there or available or the person for one reason or another didn't actually have the ability to consent to that being part of that work, which is noted in metadata. So we have, there is one example right now in the digital collection. It's. The, the gay sunshine winter issue, 1979 and in the notes and what we've just started decided to do is that for anything like that where we've left out a few parts of an individual. We would just make sure that the notes. Accurately state what is. If somebody for one reason or another really needs to see what the part of the missing part of the object is. So this just says, pages 32 to 35 were not included in the digital collection. Due to privacy concerns. You know, you, that the whole goal of not causing more harm, we didn't want to add more detail than was absolutely necessary, just noting there was a privacy concern. That being said, all of the details regarding the decisions and everything are kept internally and recorded, you know, between the digital projects team as well as the subject experts. So. If for any reason we do have to reference back to that note. We internally know why and what decision was made, but we're just. Keeping it to a minimum. All right, so like I said, those were some of our more. Recent projects. So now we're going to start thinking about some of our projects that have been published for a little while or in the case maybe needed to collection review because it came through as a project request. So, my first example here is actually from the Penn State Abington Digital Collections. They have several collections. We, I think it's about 4 or 5 that we have right now. Within content DM for the Penn State Abington campus. So Kevin Cieber, he's new relatively new head. I think he's about a year in now. I'm relatively new head of depends state at Abington Library as, did submit a proposal in, 2023 requesting guidance on how to address outdated language and cultural appropriation of indigenous culture, language and cultural appropriation of indigenous culture within the collections. And there were some other concerns that were part of the language and cultural appropriation of indigenous culture within the collections. And there were some other, concerns that were part of the proposal, but those were just, some of the highlights that I wanted to put here on the slide. And so For that, we had a couple of talks back and forth and this was one of those examples where we really felt that maybe. Getting that program statement up in available. As part to be, incorporated into the digital collections. Possibly adding some specific notes to landing pages will meet the need as opposed to using the content warning flags in the actual system. But here you'll see I actually put an image example. Of one of the pages from a yearbook from the Ugand School of Young Ladies Collection. This is from the 1,949 chieftain, where cultural appropriation at. A all white women's finishing school in a very affluent area. Outside of Philadelphia, you know, utilized imagery from indigenous cultures as part of their yearbook. So, That is just one example from the collections that. You know, thought highlighted this detail very well. Alright, so the next example I have is actually something that's just finished very recently. So, the World War II glass play collection. Has been up in our, in our digital collections for a long time. I believe since it, at least, 2012, but I can always double check that date if anybody is curious. And. For for this material it was after kind of doing a collection review and seeing what maybe are some materials in addition to Abington that we might wanna consider looking at. I noticed that the World War 2 glass plates were made a bit one of them and this was a topic that we had discussed in the digital projects team a little bit and having Claire and Gwen Johns, from Special Collections helped kind of make final decisions for this collection, helped kind of make final decisions for this collection on what materials could potentially need a content warning. So right now, similarly to Black history and visual culture. This collection which you know, hundreds of glass plate slides has once again only 6 active, content warning flags in it. And I realized that my note on this is incorrect. I am sorry. This one is not due to bodily harm in police violence. I apologize. I will fix that slide before these get sent out. But the landing page note notice is actually more accurate. The reason why these 6 slides and other slides we want to make sure that folks were aware of before they enter the collection. Although in middlely with the title. It's probably a little self-explanatory with World War One is that some of the images in this collection contain. Graphic representations of injuries of death. From combat. So there are images of dead soldiers. American French. And several others that you will find. In this collection. Most of the collection is not that graphic, but there are a few examples in there that It's felt appropriate to add those content warnings. But once again, not overused method at all. Okay. All right. So we're getting close to the end here. I wanna make sure that there's time for questions and discussions. But. As I said, this work is. Still ongoing. So right now with, you know, the combination of the University Libraries web page, the current functionalities of our content of content, and which is our digital clocks collections platform that we use. These are just some of the things that we know that we can do. So we can have. A large institutional level statement that can be linked to our digital collections, we can add notes to the landing pages that describe our digital collections and we can consider. Flags. You know, and blurred images for certain types of materials that we deem maybe need that slightly little extra level of attention. But like I said, there could be other ways to address these things. You know, whether it's in content, DM or possibly in a different system, if we end up migrating off of content TM. But, there are still, of course, like I said, some next steps that we want to consider. So. So continue to work with Library Administration strategic partners to review and adapt. The statement on potentially harmful content. As I said, there is at least 2 groups that myself and Elizabeth have notified that we should talk to before maybe we take those final steps in publishing the page so if there's any others that you're thinking of or that you know of that are doing work that aligns with this, please feel free to share those. With me, you know, during discussion or afterwards. Also continue to collaborate with our subject experts, our selectors and community members to improve the representation and the description of our digital collections. This will be an ongoing thing. Just because we publish a digital collection does not mean that it has to remain untouched till the end of time. That actually that is not the goal. So, you know, if you were part of a digital project before and you know that there's something that could be potentially addressed. We can go ahead and before the end of session, share the link to the digital projects form and we can start looking into how we might be able to do some work on that material. And then like I said, the one other thing that because it aligns well with this is establish a policy and some guidelines for handling privacy concerns in digital collections. This is something that is on my to-do list is on my radar, although we have already started to. Look at privacy concerns for certain digital collections already. And a lot of times I do get guidance and research. Research materials on this from the scholarly communications and copyright team. They are a great resource to me and others around the library. So that's another thing just recognizing that the collaboration is also going to be a big ongoing element of keeping this work going. Alright, so with that in mind, we can go into some questions and discussion. And I can also go back to any other slides if folks have. Specific. Things that they want to talk about or reference again. Yep. Beth, for some of the previous sessions we've done, we've turned off recording for discussions. Do we wish to continue to do that today? Yeah, I think that would probably be okay. Now with that being said, folks, we do usually turn off the recording, but we take notes. Regarding the questions and discussions. So as long as folks are okay with that, that is one thing we will still continue to do. Alright, yeah, Lindsey, you can go ahead and you can turn off. Our recording at this time.