Greetings,

  As a “Special Formats” Cataloger I catalog a wide variety of materials, not just maps, where these issues arise. For our library this occurs  most notably in the large sheet music collection we have. As you might imagine, depictions of African-Americans, the Irish, women, and just about anyone not a cis-het white male can be pretty atrocious. I do provide subject access to that cover art and feel that therein lies one of the rich research potentials for the collection. Those images show us, graphically, where we’ve been as a nation, how far we’ve come (or not!), and illustrates those historic changes in thought and privilege that are still underway today.

It has to be the same with the maps as well. I’ve cataloged maps with Native American and African American depicted on them and treat those images just as I do the sheet music covers: as areas of discovery, questioning, and future research.



Garth Tardy

Special Formats Cataloger

University of Missouri—Kansas City.



From: Maps-L: Map Librarians, etc. <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Brad Elbein

Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2019 3:04 PM

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: Re: Outdated/Culturally Insensitive Maps and Atlases



I'm just a map-loving hanger on to this list serve, not one of you Map Librarians.  But I'm horrified by this idea:  de-accessioning the embarassing documents " so the casual user does not stumble across it?"  Don't we as an Enlightenment-evolved culture want "casual users" to stumble across things that will make them uncomfortable and make them ask questions?  It seems to me that such an accident serves two purposes:  (1) It makes the stumblers uncomfortably aware that there were other people and ideas here before them and (2) it makes them aware that they are very likely every bit as benighted as the past generations, but just don't know it yet ... and might want to be humble about knowing "the truth."



I've been thinking lately that the biggest problem with the electronic-ization of knowledge is that there are always governments that will want to control knowledge, and the electronic storage of knowledge makes it so much easier to do away with what's inconvenient for that government.  Librarians and libraries in the liberal democracies are the bulwarks against that.  And here we're going to self-sensor out of fear that someone might "casually stumble" across some map and ... and what?  Have a heart attack and die?  Burn the library down?  Go to the Board of Regents?  I mean, please.  Why would you do the devils work for him?



 Brad



Caveat Lector:  I dictate a lot of my e-mails and can't always go back and edit, so sometimes they come out as gibberish.  Autocomplete also sometimes thinks that I'm speaking Spanish and inserts inapposite words.  Rest assured it's the software, not creeping dementia.