Digitization Selection Criteria as Anti-Racist Action
Ziegler, SL · Civil War Book Review · 2019
By deciding what to digitize in special collections and archives, we choose what narratives to promote, what history to highlight, and what legacies to further. This paper details a new initiative at LSU Libraries to integrate diversity and inclusion goals into digitization policies. After reviewing examples of how digitization can be either beneficial or harmful to individuals represented in the historical record, the author uses Ibram Kendi's definition of racist policy -- that which leads to racial inequalities -- as a starting point for exploring how digitization selection can help counteract histories of exclusion.