Statement on Harmful Content

Oberlin College Libraries is committed to anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Our collections reflect the broad, lived experience of human expression and thus may include offensive, harmful, or distressing language or images. Library users may encounter historical and contemporary images, language, or ideas currently recognized–or even deemed so when they were created–as offensive and unacceptable. Oberlin College Libraries collects such content due to its significance for those seeking out the broad spectrum of human ideologies and behaviors; we do not endorse offensive or harmful images or ideologies expressed in the materials we include in our collections. We openly reject oppressive views expressed in our collections, but believe in the importance of responsibly and transparently providing access to collections in a way that preserves the historical evidence of social conditions and attitudes.

We also attempt to describe and provide access to all the content in our collections in ways that are inclusive, respectful, and do not cause harm to those who interact with the collections. This includes people who create, use, and are represented in the collections at Oberlin College Libraries. We acknowledge that there are terms in the library catalog that are potentially hurtful, offensive, or unclear, including some Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). These standardized words or phrases describe an item’s content; some may have seemed entirely appropriate when first devised but are now considered offensive, while others may have always been problematic. While we retain these terms to support search and discovery by those conducting searches using these terms, we also believe it is important to acknowledge these terms as problematic and advocate for changes. In an effort to address problematic language in resource description, Oberlin and the Five Colleges of Ohio Libraries launched a Subject Term Flagging initiative in 2023 that identifies known problematic LCSH terms in OBIS record displays and offers the opportunity for users to suggest alternative terms.