Discriminating terms in the image archive
Together with the Project DigiROM we have been discussing since the beginning of the project how we want to deal with discriminatory terms in the image archive. We have looked at other examples, for instance the way the State Art Collections in Dresden deal with racist names of exhibits, we have followed, among other things, the controversial discussions around these changes and we have decided on a masking in the form of clickable starlets in the first level view as well as the display of a notice. This form is now integrated into prometheus.
If you click on the three orange starlets in the search results list, you will be shown the following text:
“Titles and descriptions in historical records sometimes contain discrimatory terms. We opted to mask these terms by default. However, in case you require it for your research endeavors, we provide the option to display the original vocabulary.”
You, as a user, can now decide on the second level to display in this one case or to display all terms during your entire session. In this first step, four German-language discriminatory terms (I***, M***, N***, Z***) are automatically hidden in titles, descriptions and keywords. And we continue to discuss whether and if so, which other terms, also in other languages, should also be blanked out and which notes could additionally support a sensitive handling of historical sources. Please feel free to discuss with us.
