The College of New Jersey Gitenstein Library Archives and Special Collections (the Archives) contains thousands of items that were created by students, faculty, staff, alumni, and other unrelated individuals and organizations. As we continue to make more materials available for viewing online via our digitization program, it is necessary to acknowledge that the Archives contains some content that may be harmful or difficult to view. We endeavor to preserve the materials we collect in order to provide a more nuanced and comprehensive historical record. Consequently, some of the materials may reflect outdated, biased, offensive, and possibly violent views and opinions due to pervasive systemic intolerance.
Frequently Asked Questions
What harmful or difficult content may be found in the Archives?
Some items may:
- Reflect racist, sexist, ableist, misogynistic, homophobic, and xenophobic opinions, attitudes, and actions.
- Be discriminatory toward or exclude diverse views on sexuality, gender, appearance, religion, and more.
- Include graphic content of historical events such as violent death, crime, wars/terrorist acts, natural disasters, and more.
- Demonstrate bias and exclusion in institutional collecting and documentation policies.
Why does the Archives make potentially harmful content available?
The Archives makes digital collections openly available for a variety of purposes, but primarily teaching and research. The TCNJ community values digital access to this growing body of unique materials that document the history of the college, New Jersey, and the world at large. These archival collections provide evidence of institutional activities and decision-making, as well as the activities of individuals and organizations. Digital access to these materials increases their use, ensures accountability, and provides another resource for people seeking a broader understanding of the historical record.
Some of these historical materials may represent positions, norms, and values that are inconsistent with TCNJ’s ethics and commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. The Archives strives to provide context for these items through descriptive records, and warning statements about potentially harmful digitized objects.
How are these materials described?
Although the Archives does not attempt to hide potentially offensive materials in our collections, nor alter their titles or contents, we can control how such materials are described, contextualized, and presented online to our users. We carefully select sensitive and respectful language in the descriptive information that appears alongside each item and provide warnings about potentially harmful materials within a collection. Thoughtful descriptions can alert users to these materials and empower them to make decisions on how to proceed with their research. The Archives follows best practices in descriptive metadata and acknowledges that acceptable terminology changes over time. Therefore, descriptive policies and newly published literature on the topic in the field are reviewed regularly.
How can I report harmful content?
The Archives will use all reports of harmful content to better understand the issue and educate other archivists, librarians, and library workers. We welcome your feedback. Contact the Archives via Ask a Librarian at https://library.tcnj.edu/research-help/ask-a-librarian/.
Specific objections to materials will be addressed in accordance with the TCNJ Gitenstein Libraries’ mission and this policy, and in consultation with the archivists responsible for the specified collections, who are informed about the profession’s best practices and codes of ethics, and are responsible for the sensitive handling of cultural materials. Possible actions may include but are not limited to the following:
- The identified materials remain available online with no change
- Provision of additional descriptive information to provide context for the materials in question
Challenges to inclusion of specific items in the Library’s collection will be addressed by the Interim Library Director.
Credits/sources
This statement was based on the Digital Public Library of America’s (DPLA) Statement on Potentially Harmful Content found at this link: https://dp.la/about/harmful-language-statement.