 My name is Jill Whitelock. I'm Head of Special Collections at Cambridge University line 3 and I'm really pleased to be co-hosting this session as a member of RLUK Special Collections and Heritage Network, along with Simon Dixon. Simon, would you like to come in and introduce yourself? Thank you Jill. It's great to see so many people joining us this afternoon. So my name is Simon Dixon. I'm the Head of Archives and Special Collections at the University of Leicester, and I have, along with Jill, been a member of the Special Collections RLUK Network since it was founded. Thanks Simon. So before we move on to introduce our speakers, I'll just say a little bit more about the session and how it's going to work this afternoon. So the session will explore how we can make our institutions, collections and practices more open and inclusive to engage successfully with our diverse audiences. There'll be three short presentations, one from the US, two from colleagues in the UK, which aim to set the scene for the discussion and provide some examples of the practices that research libraries internationally are currently using to achieve culture change, develop open and inclusive collections, as well as engage with underrepresented communities. So as I mentioned, the session is facilitated by RLUK Special Collections and Heritage Network, or SCHN. This is a professional peer network for RLUK members, leading cultural heritage activities within member libraries. Members of the network include those working with or within archives, rare books, art and object collections, museums, galleries, conservation and their allied services. This session raises some key issues that concern the SCHN community, and on which RLUK institutions aim to develop strategic leadership. This is going to be a highly interactive roundtable discussion, and that's best viewed in Zoom directly. So if you're watching in feedlink, please click the grey box under the view window for the direct link to Zoom. We very much welcome contributions from everyone during this session. So please share any thoughts or questions you have in the chat box. You can also join us at the virtual table by raising your hand, and you'll then be brought into the discussion and your camera and mic will be activated so you can appear on screen as part of the panel. And when you want to leave the panel, just raise your hand again. If you're on Twitter, the hashtag for the conference is RLUK22. And now I'll hand back over to Simon to introduce our speakers. Thanks very much, Jill. So we have three speakers this afternoon, and I'll introduce them each before their individual presentation. So I'm delighted to welcome, first of all, Francesca Marini, PhD, who is programming an outreach librarian at Cushing Memorial Library and Archives, Texas A&M University Libraries. Francesca's paper is going to discuss how outreach efforts at the Cushing Memorial Library and Archives are contributing to positively changing campus culture moving away from traditionally conservative approaches. And so I'll hand over now to Francesca who will speak for about 10 minutes. So very much, Simon, for introducing and thank you RLUK for inviting me and everybody for attending. So as Simon said, I'm Francesca Marini, I've been at the Cushing Memorial Library and Archives, which is Special Collections and Archives at the Texas A&M Libraries for about eight years now. And as you know, Texas is a rather conservative state, getting better, getting worse, it depends when you look. A&M right now is going through a pretty conservative phase, so it's very important that we push back. And I'm lucky to have really wonderful colleagues who have built very diverse collections. So we have a very large LGBTQIA collection, we have African American studies, Asian studies, a lot of really broad areas, and we really try to serve every community. So we have done a lot of work on campus to change the culture here, and a lot of our collecting activities, including outreach, have really made a difference. For example, for the LGBTIA community on campus, we really are a welcoming place. And so I'm just going to talk about some of the things we did briefly and then we'll have a discussion with everybody at the end. So as I said, you cannot do this work alone, although the people in my group, I mean it's not a lot of us doing this work here, but we have enough of a cultural mess within the libraries and also on campus. So we're really connected with each other. And I also really like to start communication and collaboration with other institutions. So I've done a lot with other institutions in town, did a lot of work with the people in Newstone. So it really you need to build the network to really make changes. So I'm going to show you my library because you have fantastic beautiful buildings in the UK as we have in Italy. And the US says some gorgeous ones and some so so once I think we're pretty good. We are in 1930 building, and you can see the outside and then I have a couple of I have a photo of the entrance of our reading room. So I'm going to talk about some of the ways we engage communities. And they're generally collaborations so I've done exhibitions with other institutions and other partners in other places but also collaborations within campus and collaborations with my student interns I run the internship program for the for museum studies. The students have come up with their own ideas down their own displays and we also internally I mean we all work together with our student workers and with my colleagues. So there is always an aspect of collaboration, even if we do a small display, but also of course in the large exhibitions. We launched a blog in 2020 and we're really pushing a lot of diversity issues there. So some talks are given other talks are just my colleagues speaking, and I also started a series of talks that are collaborations with other institutions that have similar collections or similar concerns, as we do. So I call them mirror talks, and that's another way to bring in really diverse voices. And of course we have all kind of open houses tours, we go to fairs, like we always go to the rainbow fair on campus for LGBTQIA students. So we really did do a lot, both in person and online. And also for our LGBTQIA collections we have a research fellowship that has been going on for several years now, again a collaboration with the College of Liberal Arts. We've brought in some wonderful young scholars who work in the field, and they help as advertiser collections and also we help them in their scholarships so again is again about establishing relationships and spreading the word. And as I said I also run internships so not only students from campus but also from different programs, especially museum studies, but also from other institutions. One example here, our largest LGBTQIA plus collection is the Don Kelly research collection of gay literature and culture. And we work with Don Kelly was a wonderful donor in Houston is still adding to the collection. Last I asked it was about 32,000 items but I think it's more now. We really collected international level, and we did a great exhibition in 2015 that was up for quite a while and got a lot of response and I think really established as in terms of our reach in this area for LGBTQIA collections. So, as I said I worked with my colleagues so my colleagues in 2019 they put together an exhibition about diversity in science fiction and fantasy. We have one of the largest science fiction and fantasy collections in the world I know you have the collection at Liverpool which is wonderful. We have other ones in the US to, but we're quite known in this field. And my colleague Jeremy Brett and other colleagues wanted to show how diversity has always been a part of science fiction so they put together this quite large exhibit, but really good response. Jeremy also using the science fiction and fantasy collection put together an exhibition about climate change and there was a really nice way of bringing attention to really important issues that Texas sometimes things don't exist. And we invited people from campus to also do programming around the exhibit and we actually have the Texas climatologist is based here at Texas A&M University. So he gave a talk and he talked about how they come up with different scenarios for climate change that almost sound like stories in science fiction but unfortunately are not. And I'll talk briefly about the exhibit I put together last year. There are also large collections and wonderful work done with the community in Houston for the LGBTQIA history collections. And so I really wanted to work with my colleagues in Houston so we collaborated with the University of Houston Rice University and then many community archives which are absolutely fascinating here and also artists. We put together a total of nine partners, it was very complex to organize, but it was a lot of fun. And we put together this exhibit that got over 3000 visitors which for us is a really good I number. There was a lot of media coverage both locally and in Houston, and we made it on like some key publications and radio programs in the LGBTQIA community so that was very important. And it really gave a very positive message to campus I got professors came over with their classes they one professor arranged for their class to have their main assignment based on the exhibition. And also, I gave a lot of tours so I got a lot of positive comments, and looking at the comments also in the guest book. It was very heartening to see how people said, thank you for the representation. Love is love. Thank you for showing a history, and, and then people also sharing personal comments about their lives. So I really think we made a positive impact impact on the community. It really made people feel welcome and that they represented. And it was essential that, yes, I started the exhibition I coordinated I did the final selection, but what was given to me was chosen by the community and preserved by the community so that actually preserving the history, and I just gave them a showcase. So it was like me kind of being the mediator and them being under the spotlight, as it should. I also worked at the time with one of my student interns who is part of the community and you wrote a beautiful blog article about the exhibit. And this is just one piece which is one collage the credit chair that talks about LGBTQIA history. And it was done after the shooting at the Orlando club. So, and it was done in 2016 so it talked about 47 years of history since the Stonewall uprising. In our current exhibition, there's just a small exhibition of highlights of our collections but even there I always make an effort to show diversity so we have a case dedicated to Afro-Futurism comics, we have items from the LGBTQIA collections, and so on. So I always everything I do, I really get the message out. And these are some examples and yes we do also have an Elvis collection. And the dress you see here is was worn by Tejano performer Lydia Mendoza was really very famous singer. So we also have objects and they they're very good for engaging audiences. I mentioned our blog, which is called the Cushing Collective, we've had all kind of topics. We had a really successful two part article about Juneteenth, which is the celebration of when enslavement was ended in Texas. And the celebration started in Galveston, and it's something very well known in Texas not necessarily elsewhere, but that got a really good response and I also, we also published articles related to our talks. We had students saying that we inspired them to be anti-racist. So again, a good impact and something that makes me feel good that is not just a talk but it's something that is making a difference. And the same with our blog articles. And that's all I have. And this is our original mascot, the original, original Reveley dog. Now they're collie dogs, but originally it was just this very cute black dog. So that's all I have. And I'll pass it on to my colleagues. That's fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing that and for really showing us how our collections can make our campuses more welcoming and inclusive. If there are questions for all of the participants, please feel free to put those in the chat and then we will come to those after we've heard from all of our three speakers this afternoon. So I'll move on now to, it's my pleasure to introduce Richard Ragh, who is collections manager at the University of Sussex and his presentation will be on finding new activities in old collections. Taking the University of Sussex's decolonization activities as a starting point, he's going to talk about work undertaken to present collections in a more inclusive way through cataloging and through teaching. Thanks Simon. Show my screen. Hopefully, hopefully that's showing. So yes, I'm Richard Ragh, I'm the collections manager at the University of Sussex, as has been said, and I'm also a member of the ROU case special collections and heritage network. And so for the few minutes that I've got, I'd like to talk about our decolonization activities at Sussex. I suspect as is likely to become clear, I'm not an expert in all of this work, but I'm grateful for the chance to speak to you this afternoon. And I hope that some of the questions that we've been grappling with will be of interest to others and perhaps conform the basis for discussion later in the session. To start with a little bit of background information. I think it's fair to say that a few years ago, a view was being taken that efforts to decolonize the curriculum and the university should be led by students and academics. And that isn't say that colleagues in the library weren't interested or engaged with that work. But as a team, I think we were really taking a supporting role. So it became clear that there were areas of work where it was appropriate for the library to take a lead, and that such work fell into a broad category of decolonization activities. And this led to the writing of a decolonization statement in 2019, and the establishment of a working group to facilitate and support decolonization activities, such as cataloging engagement collaboration and training. At the risk of moving straight to the end of the story, I think as an institution where we are now is that we're working to figure out how we can take pockets of activity and ensure that they're embedded in the operations of the library to form structural and long lasting change. And so our next task therefore is to look to increasing the library's library teams overall knowledge and as a team to undertake training and continued professional development. And how we go about that in a way which is relevant to colleagues and not overly theoretical for those who want practical guidance and ideas is a challenge and I don't think we've quite met it yet so I'd be really interested to hear later how others might approach this. But in the time that's allowed to me I'd like to focus on on something else. And I'm grateful to be able to speak to you this afternoon. And I, as Simon mentioned I suggested I do so under the rather grand title of finding new activities in old collections. At Sussex, as I'm sure is the case elsewhere, we want to engage in this area of work in a way that isn't tokenistic or simply jumping on bandwagons. Our university is grouped as one of the plate glass universities opened in the 1960s. So how can we engage with decolonization activities when our collections and institution aren't centuries old and more obviously linked with colonialism. And how do we proceed when we currently don't have a budget to collect significantly in response to this work, at least not in relation to those materials that would fall into the category of special collections. Of course we can reflect on how Western ideas about the concept of a university and methods of learning have shaped our institution and what that means for our students and academics. But what else. At this stage, I really must acknowledge the efforts of my colleagues Alice Corble, Caroline Marchant Wallace, Claire Playforth, Danny Millam, and Karen Watson, for it's really their hard work that I'm about to summarize. What links that work, and I hope allows me to speak on their behalf is a sense of taking existing collections and applying applying new activities to them. I'll begin with the British Library for Development Studies or BLDS. And this is a substantial research collection on development issues at the Institute of Development Studies. It holds over 80,000 monographs, including individual research reports, working papers and books, and over 10,000 magazines, newspapers, annual reports and newsletters. And through the material, we think over 50% of it originates from the global south, and of course therefore carries with it echoes of colonialism. And through the BLDS, it's possible to trace the story of international development and health systems in the global south over the last half century. It's also very comprehensive in its coverage of government and official sources, particularly published in South and Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, Asia between the mid 1960s and mid 1990s with selective coverage of other countries that were key sites of development and health research and innovation during this time. For example, Francophone Africa, the Middle East, North Africa, and South and Central America. This is the focus of a three year cataloging project. And from the outset the project team had a remit to incorporate the principles and approaches of library classification decolonization into their work. And colleagues have worked to understand and respond to the organisational structures that were applied to the collection. So some of the questions that the team are grappling with fall into the following categories. The original collection of the material, its physical organisation, metadata, and how to involve academics and researchers with the project and its legacies. And much of the BLDS collection was formed when IDS researchers gathered together relevant materials during periods of field research in the various countries represented. The materials are often rare, sometimes believed to be unique. They're often ephemeral in nature. And sometimes they originate from countries such as Somalia, where civil war has destroyed many institutional collections. And it's likely to be the case that scholars in significant numbers who wish to access the material are themselves from the global south, and may find it difficult to visit a basement store in a building on the outskirts of Brighton. Without saying, I think that a cataloging project willing itself improve access and will become the basis upon which other activities are built. Nevertheless, are our decolonisation Asian activities fundamentally flawed from the outset. The question of whether the material should be returned to the countries of origin has actually been asked by colleagues. So I think a reasonable argument can be made that much of the strength of the collection comes from its scope and its debt. It has a detrimental effect to breaking it up. And I think we're a long way really from comparison to examples such as Ben in bronzes and Parthenon marbles. But custodianship brings with it responsibilities that we seek to meet, in part through approaching the project with a decolonising mindset, and then developing current and future engagement activities, research collaborations and digitisation projects. The basement store and indeed the physical storage of the collection echoes an intellectual arrangement and is one way in which aspects of coloniality are expressed. At a basic level, the materials are ordered by country, and this of course brings colonial or imperial implications. But more overtly, in some instances, there are parallel subsections of the BLDS collection, for example relating to Zimbabwe and Rhodesia. There is value I think for researchers in understanding the provenance of the collection, but it's difficult to stick rigidly to that sort of archival concept of preserving original order, whilst also applying principles of decolonisation. And of course much can be done with careful cataloging and the thoughtful presentation of those catalog records. And so the main task of the BLDS project is to devise and apply suitable metadata. Until now, only part of the BLDS collection was catalogued, and those catalog records required considerable revision. As the cataloging work has progressed, the team have been conscious of the need to balance the requirements of compatibility with Sussex's library system, where Library of Congress subject headings are used, with the realisation that many of those subject headings are outdated, western centric, and sometimes even offensive. And so finding new activities with old collections might be nothing more groundbreaking than new cataloging work. There was to focus and funded cataloging project allows for a fresh take on best practice. We're obviously going to run into resource problems if we hope to regularly recatalog our collections, be they library or archive holdings. And one question I find myself asking is how can we justify revisiting past work when you and pressing tasks are constantly appearing on our to-do lists. I think there's a point there to be made about perhaps embedding structural change, also about advocacy and recognising the importance of decolonisation work, but I would be interested to hear how others have responded to this question. Beyond the dedicated cataloging project I've just been discussing, we've sought to make systematic but bite-sized changes at Sussex. So colleagues in the cataloging team maintain a live document showing changes made to catalog records or investigations into best practice, alongside details of the rationale or background reading undertaken and a note of future or ongoing activities. And of course it's a simple thing to maintain a spreadsheet as a record of work, but I do think it's a valuable tool in embedding activities widely, maintaining discussion and crucially ensuring that the work doesn't become the pet project of a single member of staff. And so from the spreadsheet I'm able to see that testing into subject headings of enslaved persons and enslavement as replacements for slaves and slavery has been completed, but that further research is required into whether or not bulk changes are appropriate. And perhaps the best known example of work around subject headings relates to the use of the term illegal aliens. So colleagues at Sussex were looking into this in 2019 at least and engaging with ongoing discussions within the profession as alternatives were being identified and devised. The Library of Congress has now, as of 2021, issued a revision replacing aliens and illegal aliens with non-citizens and illegal immigration, though I don't think those terms have been universally accepted and I expect the conversation to continue. What I think this clearly demonstrates though is that terminology, even that terminology which we might currently consider to be appropriate, evolves, and we need to meet the challenge of allowing our systems and processes to evolve with it. The cataloging of archive material perhaps allows a little more flexibility regarding the use and choice of terminology. Here too we are undertaking work to identify problematic or offensive language. And our goal is to ensure that researchers can discover material on the catalog without having to resort to search terms that use outdated terminology. This work I'm pleased to say has also led us to revisit how library and archive collections are presented in teaching and engagement sessions. I won't speak for my colleagues on this, but in the past I've certainly fallen back on the I think incorrect notion that the archivist is neutral, explaining the use of particular terms in the records as of their time. And we haven't started to hide those materials that because of the work and conversations that have taken place within the library team, I think we're better at recognizing the privilege that allows us to take such a detached view. Lastly and very briefly to teaching and engagement activities. As we establish more inclusive metadata and think again about the content and context of our collections, we had, we have a good opportunity to work collaboratively. Returning to the BLDS project, the team recognizes that it's necessary to work with subject specialists by allowing the cataloging work to show themes and ideas that have always been present in the collection, but perhaps hidden from view. It is becoming easier to engage academics with the collection and see them embedded into their seminars and projects elsewhere in the library. A lot of work has been done to develop inclusive reading lists and embed these in ongoing teaching activities. And this is something that we're keen to expand, as it allows us to collaborate with academics and students, developing trust and a greater understanding of library processes. Whilst the development of inclusive reading lists will result in new materials entering the collection with collaboration and the application of new perspectives, I suggest a lot can still be done by working with existing holdings. Thank you, and I'll stop sharing my screen now. Thank you very much indeed, Richard, for that presentation and really interesting to see how these activities are becoming embedded into the wider work of the Library of the University of Sussex. Please do keep the questions coming in the chat. I know there have been a few already and we'll follow those up after we've heard from our final speaker this afternoon, Judith Seafring, who is head of Digital Collections Discovery at Bodleian Libraries University of Oxford, who will be speaking to us on transforming access to digital special collections at the Bodleian Libraries, talking about a new approach to discovery and access for the huge manuscript and archival holdings found in Oxford. Judith. Thank you. I'll try and share my screen. Hopefully you can see something. So, thank you very much for my introduction as I'm Judith Seafring, I'm head of Digital Collections Discovery at the Bodleian, and I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the challenges and the sort of scale of work that we have coming up over the next few years as we tackle our huge data holdings around our digital collections. So in terms of discovery audiences and inclusiveness at Oxford at the Bodleian. The university has a strategic commitment to enabling and widening access to university collections and the Bodleian sits within the gardens libraries and museums division of the university so we're a part of the same division as for example the Museum of Natural History and the whole university has a commitment to reaching new audiences into widening access and that filters down into all aspects of our work. And that includes increased outreach to wider user communities beyond what we think of as a traditional academic user base. We are of course a large research library, but we're also situated right in the middle of Oxford. Can we reach out to a wider group. And in terms of our approach to discovering access to our collections that idea of widening our audiences and improving our access is inherently informed by a desire to be both more inclusive and more diverse in terms of our outputs and material and the collections that we're presenting via our digital collections, but also the audiences for those collections and who we engage with. And I think we are constrained in many ways by tradition. And so we sort of have to get past that a little bit. And because of the size of the Bodleian libraries collections and we've been 400 years old, we have a lot of material. The scale of those collections mean that they're managed by different curatorial teams and have been have been so over over many, many years. So, because of that the manuscripts and archives and print materials are surfaced via different systems. So there's no one access point to materials in Oxford. And in the complicating factor of all the colleges in Oxford who also have their large scale collections is quite a complicated environment for any researcher or any interested individual coming into Oxford. And that has led in itself to digital systems that don't speak to each other. They're built on different systems and standards metadata standards so that they encoded archival description for our calculations, text encoding initiative catalog records for our manuscripts, and then, you know, mark for our books. And so we have these different systems and different traditions of cataloging. Additionally, retro conversion is a big activity within Oxford. We're working often from, say, 19th century print catalogs, and that in itself that retro conversion process can reinforce blind spots of the past and outdated conceptions of what our collections are and how they're structured. So that might be something like a focus on the founding collections of the library, where we're thinking more in terms of the individuals who collected materials, rather than the materials themselves which I don't think quite fits. Any more when we move into the digital world. And this idea of Oxford and its understanding that people are better able to find things to know about things to understand where to go to find what they need for their research is kind of a right of passage. If you don't understand Oxford, you're sort of being through that process and you're much better placed to find what you're looking for than if you aren't. And this, by translating this into the digital realm, we've kind of often privileged the expert user, so the person who knows Oxford, who's been through that process of learning about collections and known how they're organized, knowing university. And so we sort of thought in terms of very expert researchers who know exactly what they're looking for. And that's actually quite a small proportion of our audience. Now, when we look at the audiences for our digital collections, 75% of them are non UK know there is very much a global audience now and we have to start thinking globally. So as we shift to digital what we're trying to think now is that users shouldn't need to know how collections are organized the Oxford in order to find what they're looking for. So we assume that our users have expert level understanding of the collections or the tools that are available to them. We need to be doing that signposting we need to be helping people and making as easy as possible for all users to find what they're looking for. And we're in the past I think we sort of thought well, if you know exactly what you're looking for you know the shelf mark you know exactly exactly what it is that you want, you'll find it. And actually you might not know, especially if you're sitting, you know, in your study somewhere outside the UK you don't know what we have in Oxford, you don't know what you need you don't know what you want. And so we want to encourage speculative searching and browsing a sort of a serendipitous discovery of the materials that might be relevant, because that will help you know whether you want to make a trip to Oxford, whether it will be a value to you and you get here. So this is going to be sort of a large scale problem for us, but we are starting now with a project that is in flight, which is called the famous project and the famous is an acronym if any of you know Oxford you know that we love acronyms. And it stands for finding archives and manuscripts across Oxford unique special collections so bit of a mouthful. But what we will be doing is creating a new discovery interface into manuscripts and archives of Oxford is funded by the Mellon Foundation, and his primary aim is to democratize access to Oxford collections by allowing users to search across various different systems in ways that don't privilege that expert user so making it much much more easy, much more accessible for all sorts of different users. And Bodleian collections will be findable alongside collections from some Oxford colleges so we're working collaboratively, creating a framework and hoping that that framework can then expand in the future. And the title for the interfaces Marco manuscripts and archives of Oxford, and we're hoping that that will be visible sometime next year. But I think, as we've worked through this new approach and started to figure out how we want to go about it we realized that there are some sort of significant data challenges, which I think touches on a number of the points that that Richard raised in his talk previously, specifically about our data and recognizing the need to. Yeah, to sort of properly resource metadata properly think about how we can do recathologing and revisiting data. So we're looking at things like moving away from the primacy of the shelf mark towards digital persistent identifiers so trying to look at unique ways to identify objects and catalog records that can then allow us to make connections between data sets in ways that we couldn't before connecting manuscript and archival data, can a way that sort of can be surfaced together that's much more useful for a researcher, especially one who's looking across different collections. We really want to do more person place work and other tagging to enable new kinds of searches between different data sets so not necessarily the kind of traditional Oxford approach for you know your first search boxes shelf mark. You want to be looking for different kinds of information about people and places. We're looking again at how we approach authorities and abstracting them to a certain degree. So person of the you know names may appear in lots of different data sets, and the individuals may be called by different names in different traditions and different data sets. In other words, we've perhaps given more weight to to Latinate versions of names or to English versions of names. We don't want to necessarily do that's not necessarily appropriate to do that in different data sets. So we'd like to have a kind of a sort of a string to refer to individuals that can then have labels in different data sets to sort of reflect the nature of that variety. There are sort of specific quite big data challenges. And I think, as Richard indicated the sort of sent the need to to recap and revisit data means that we do have to have a strategic for focus on our metadata management and curation. We realize as we try to match up archival and manuscript records that even if it's for the same object often different types of information have been surfaced in different areas. So it's hard to see in that process what has been missed, especially if you know where are the gaps, if something is based on a 19th century catalog, the world view that created that catalog is very different from ours. And so revisiting in quite a large scale way is going to be necessary for for our metadata management. To do this, I think we're trying to establish the principles for future data creation so it's sort of easier to start fresh with new material that we're going to catalog in the future, but taking those new principles and retrospectively applying them to our legacy data is a much more challenging challenge, I think, but one that we think we need to do and prioritize and work on collaboratively with with other institutions so I'd be very interested when we get to the discussion part of this to hear sort of strategies that may have worked elsewhere. So that's all I have to say I will stop sharing at this point. Thank you Judith for that really interesting talk through how you're approaching discovery of your large historic and complex characters, collections at the University of Oxford. So we're now moving into the discussion phase of the round table so if you do have questions, comments for the panelists please put those in the chat. And if you'd like to come up and join the round table, then please raise your hands and Melanie and Christina will perform some wizardry in the background which will enable you to join the conversation. Is there anything that you would like to pick up from the chat so far. Yeah, we've had a few questions coming through there was an early one there for Francesca around resourcing. I think that also picks up with something Richard talked about, how do we move this work that is so critical and everyone's responsibility away from kind of pockets of projects into something that's much more widespread across the institution. I don't know if Francesca wants to come in first on that particularly with regard to the exhibitions, she's replied in the chat something really quite interesting and intriguing around zero budget exhibitions Francesca I don't know if you want to say a bit about that and then maybe Richard come into and Judith. Yeah. So yeah, as I was saying, moving beyond the pockets of projects is critical in special collections and archives and that's when you really need to work with the communities which is what I'm doing more and more so you're just part of a network you're not just an archivist or a librarian you're part of a network and we have everybody in our network so I think that's the only way to get kind of like a critical mass. And we also do let's say right now the current president is changing everything, getting librarians out of the libraries. There is a bit of a my personal opinion not representing my institution, a political push in our areas that are more progressive so they, there is an event that the students put together every year, and it's called Dragiland. Agiland is the nickname for our university in our area, because the aggies are from agriculture, Texas A&M is agriculture and mechanical college anyway, Agiland is where we are. Dragiland is a drug performers, and it's a fantastic show that has been going on for like three years now. When you usually get some funding from the university, this year it was cut. The students raised their own money, so the event is happening anyway. We are partnering with the other colleagues on campus to be on a panel, and the show support. So we were going to talk about our collections and then we have a performer was going to talk about their performance. And so, even things like that is just a way to show support and show that you're just there for the community, not just as an archive. And also, what I do with exhibitions, I really am trying is hard here because of the physical environment but I'm focusing more and more on physical accessibility. Again, of course, we have to do more than just the physical, but I have changed guidelines so now our labels are much easier to read the shorter text, the Spanish translation, and also the cases are arranged differently so it's easy to get close to the case and we're ordering more and more table cases where let's say if you're using a wheelchair you can get closer. So little things, big things, hope, again, being part of the network and working with other people. I can talk about budgets, but I don't want to monopolize so do we want to get to that later? Richard, do you want to interject? Maybe I had a few comments on sort of that structural change and positioning. I guess from our point of view, and as you're saying Francesca, collaboration is crucial and for us it's about collaborating across campus and trying to lead or support or tap into whatever is appropriate, some of the ongoing activities and I think that helps to raise awareness. I think our university like many are keen to look beyond campus and to be sort of good community partners and I guess being inclusive in the actions that we take is a key part of that and I think libraries and particularly special collections are often really well placed for community engagement activities so that's one thing. I guess the other thing I would say though in terms of sort of how we embed this work into our everyday activities is not to forget that we are talking about everyday activities and I've presented a paper on cataloging but cataloging of course is nothing new in a library or archive and how we approach it and what we're doing about some of these tasks might be slightly different and it's responding to new ideas that are developing but I think we need to remember and also remind others that we're not kind of ripping up our previous practices and doing something dramatically new. We are actually behaving as professionals and undertaking appropriate work and so it therefore follows that that work absolutely should be part of our cult tasks and sort of strategically placed in the work of the institution. Thank you Rich. I just wondered if Judith wanted to follow on from that and then I see we have a couple of members of the audience who joined us who will come to next. Yeah I think the question of cataloging being a core of institutional activity and of course it is and I think what worries me slightly about it is certainly around sort of digitisation activity recently is that in recent years we've kind of separated the need for cataloging off from a lot of the projects that we've engaged with just made assumptions about it that it will just sort of happen magically and of course it doesn't because it requires expertise it requires resourcing. And it's incredibly important and I think because it is sort of very such a library activity that it kind of gets lost when we're looking for large scale funding for things. And I think if any opportunity that we have to stress again the importance of metadata creation and cataloging them we should do it because I do think that we struggle to sort of resource the service part of it because it's quite often project focus which I think is where this question started. Thanks Judith. And so we now have a couple of members of the audience who joined us I wonder Amanda and Simon would you like to introduce yourselves and then I'll come to Amanda for her question. Hi yeah so I'm Amanda Wheatley I'm a librarian at McGill University. I'm both a subject librarian and an outreach librarian. So similar to Francesca I do exhibits and displays at my library. I don't know if you want to introduce Simon first and then we ask her. Yeah Simon would you like to introduce yourself and then I'll come back to Amanda. Yeah Simon Baines University Library University of Aberdeen. Hey thanks Simon so Amanda would you like to ask your, make your comment and ask your question. Yeah, so my question is about dead naming projects. So this is something I was looking at as part of like our exhibits and displays and trying to kind of promote and kind of increase our diversity and I think a lot of this happens in the metadata as well and we're seeing more names being changed in catalog records. One example I came across with some librarians talking about a project on Twitter and they specifically referenced the book this book is gay by Juno Dawson. And so I checked my own catalog and I saw that then the dead name but by the author had been removed, but the book cover itself physically on the shelf still has the author's dead name and even sometimes the icon that shows up in the catalog will still have an author's dead name. And so I'm just kind of curious to see if other libraries are looking at these types of projects to, you know see how we can work with this both physically and with metadata. Thank you Amanda. Who would like to come in first on that question. Just make a quick comment. So yeah for exhibits I mean we have a lot large increasingly large transgender collections we have the collection of judge Phyllis Frye Newstone it was she was the first transgender openly transgender judge in the nation if not in the world. And I have colleagues webbed names so we absolutely acknowledge that and occasionally there is all the like the old advertisement that resurfaces so I do have your questions like should I go back and like look at every piece of publicity we ever did and change the name so I haven't done that yet but it might be something to do. I can give a very, I can give a very quick and short response to Amanda specific question and the answer is no it's just we haven't, we haven't looked into that. Or at least we have an action that I think more generally we're still trying to figure out what processes we can put in place to either proactively find materials that we might want to act on, or to receive comments and suggestions from our users and then work out how to respond to those now I think in the example that you gave it it's perhaps not a contentious point but wrapped into that is ideas around sort of censorship of material law, how we deal with what one person finds problematic but one person doesn't find problematic and where we as librarians sort of draw those lines and interject and and take and take action and I guess we haven't we haven't quite cracked that yet so if if if others have, I'd be interested to hit to the side Simon Jilter to jumping on a comment from the chat but I see there was one about funding around this work, and my short answer to the question as to whether our work was funded or not is also no we tried to wrap it into our sort of ongoing activities which Amanda in reference to the sort of work that you're talking about then of course brings problems with it because it you know that's potentially a big piece and quite a time consuming piece of work to do when when colleagues are busy so it's not much of an answer for you but it's an important question to us so thank you. Just to say Amanda from my understanding is that at Oxford the Bodleian we haven't yet tackled that issue, although you know maybe that it's happening elsewhere in the library that I don't know about but I'm not aware that we have and it is a really interesting question and I'll make a note to myself to go and investigate what we are doing in that area so thank you for that. Thank you Amanda and there's a comment in the chat from Steven did you want to pick that up, Jill. Yes, we've got a comment there from Steven in Southampton just saying that at Southampton we have a policy to reflect the publisher in the institutional repository and to make the change comprehensively and sensitively if we are the publisher so an example there of practice it's happening in the UK already run. Right, thank you Jill and thank you very much Amanda did you just want to come in again Amanda and then I'll just say thank you to everyone for for your thoughts I know that this is kind of probably a more new subject to start coming up in these types of conversations but since we're on the track of like diversity and our collections I thought this might be a nice place to ask and see if anyone was working on it yet because we aren't yet but I really want to start and so thank you everyone for your for your comments. Great, thank you Amanda, thank you for your contribution for joining us. Simon. Thank you Simon. Thank you everybody for really interesting presentations really interesting talks. I have a question about acquisition and building the collections in the context of decolonization in particular and working with academic colleagues on decolonizing reading lists for example. And looking to ensure that the library has the right titles as academics do that. So I have a couple of related questions one is that I'm hearing some academics struggling to understand the relevance of this to them, because their position is, I teach an abstract subject, I teach maths I teach physics. It's not political. It's not about diversity per se. Now, of course, I'm not happy with that answer but I wonder how you would respond to those sorts of positions being taken. And then the related question is, how do we find out how diverse our collections are in subjects like that how do we identify, you know whether we're missing black authors in physics, for example has any work been done about that does anybody know. Thank you. I'll jump in quickly so I know my colleagues. I'm the original I write another curator per se, but some of my colleagues are like what do you describe like doesn't really apply to us. But other colleagues are very active in doing exactly what you said reviewing the collections to see what is missing who we're not representing and then going out and acquiring those materials through donations or purchases depending on the circumstances. So there are a lot of people that I know here and in other institutions that do that and that's essential in order how to respond to the people that say diversity doesn't affect me. It's hard to find sometimes a common ground when the stance is that strong, but basically is that if you make them aware that if they start talking with people and looking around. Yes, it does affect them, especially you're saying like teaching math, or sciences in general, still a lot of men and women feel like I've done and different communities feel left out. So if you start talking with people and you allow them to be themselves and express themselves. I see that yes diversity applies to you to your colleagues to your students to anything you do, and the language you use and what you say might not have like let's say an offensive word but might be part of a system of thinking that is systemic racism or anything else oppressive. You have to dig down, and it's not just the surface what you might be seeing when you don't see things is usually because you haven't educated yourself because I've seen my own journey over time. Talking with people educating yourself being open and then you start seeing the text. So, yeah, without telling them they're ignorant find a nice way to just get them into a dialogue where just dig deeper and you will find that it applies to you. Yes. Did Judith or Richard want to respond to Simon's point at all, particularly around the second part of the question about how do we find out how diverse our collections in certain subject areas are. I think from my perspective, so most of my work is on the special collections side. And so I don't necessarily sort of wouldn't know the answer to your question around sort of diversity in other areas but I think that the challenge with a place like Oxford which is so big and an organization like the Bodleian which is so big is that you have, you know, lots of different people doing lots of different things and pulling all of that activity together and applying those same principles in different areas is quite difficult. And so we are actually at the moment, recruiting a project manager for race and inclusion, because we recognize that this does, it does affect everybody in every aspect of the library's operation doesn't matter what discipline or what particular area is that you're in. And so I think the part of that work will be to identify the principles and the issues that are in all different areas and one of those might be, you know, which particular collections are, are not diverse enough that we're not perhaps surfacing so I think it requires dedicated staff time to actually go and investigate other way because it's not going to make itself clear without that investment I would say. Thank you Judith. Richard, did you want to add anything on on this point. I don't have a great deal to add I don't think to what's been said I mean I agree with Judith about about resource I. Simon forgive me I can't quite recall the details but I think there are tools that one might use to sort of mine metadata and start drawing some conclusions about the diversity of library collections I forgive me I don't know how, how advanced they are and I don't know how well they do deal with nuance or whether you just get some kind of quite blunt. Readouts and maybe if anyone's more familiar with them than than I am they can put reference to that in the chat. If they aren't well developed and that's maybe something that the sector ought to be looking at developing and assisting. Thank you your your first point I think Francesca is absolutely right and interestingly I've had some interesting conversations with people from a science background at the university or you know that sort of. I think not through my doing but the penny is kind of dropped that they've been teaching their subjects based on the the writings and the thinking of the sort of great white men and gradually they're beginning to understand that there are different points of different authorities that they can tap into I think as librarians what we can do is make their job a little easier when it comes to identifying resource or. You know, speaking to them maybe targeting the right courses first so if there's, you know if the science department is running courses on the history of the subject maybe that's a starting point to slowly build a network and collaboration but anything we can do I think as librarians to assist the selection of materials. And take that away from the academic you, I don't know, some of them are no doubt going to be ignorant of these things and can't bother to do anything about that but I think we should recognize that many of our colleagues and have overworked themselves and possibly a reluctance to changes is in part because they can't take on new activities as well so I guess we need to support them where we come back. Thanks Richard. I can see we've got quite a lot of discussion now developing and some more questions in the chat so I'll come to Jill she'll be to pick up some of the themes that are coming through Simon, oh Simon gone. Simon's still here. I was going to come back to Simon but he's gone so I'll pass to Jill to pick up some of the things that are coming through in the chat. Thank you, Simon. We've got a really great question from Hope in the chat around the idea of neutrality. And the question there is it seems that librarians and archivists know that cataloging is not a neutral act, but it sometimes seems that many students and some academics are surprised by this or have never thought about it. So the question there is could panellists share their experiences of teaching and communicating cataloging issues to their communities. I don't mind saying something about that from a from an archive point of view which is is my background, I guess. The first thing is for the the profession to recognize that we're not neutral and I don't know if I'm showing my age or not but you know I was taught that the archivist was was neutral and that was that was the start of sort of starting point of my my professional education. I needed to challenge that and I needed to get past that with with my colleagues. But beyond that I think you know those sessions that that we often engage with about searching the catalogue and how to find materials and we've just been shoehorning it into that and making clear to students that they understand that everything that we're doing for them and in some sense we're kind of mediating their access to to records right down to the examples that we choose to search for in in those sessions and I think it's just for us it's been a case of just being really, really open about that. And doing all that we can to encourage the students to come back as part of their own research or as part of their own kind of natural interest interest and start engaging with materials outside of our session so we sort of give them the tools to that they need to do that. And then they can start to understand you know how catalogue records relate to the material that they're looking at and, and so on so I guess it's a simple answer but honestly about it is that is the right way but it, it starts from understanding our own privileges and biases and and all the rest of it before we can communicate it to anyone else. I completely agree with that I think. When we were trying to sort of think of cataloging Oxford is that manuscripts and archival description is a research activity I think people think of it as quite a sort of. You know you're just title author, you know of course that's not what it is it's much more complicated than that and there's a lot more that goes into it. I think you're right to say that we know we perhaps don't even recognize our own biases. And an example is that when this has got nothing to do with with diversity but I was looking at two different catalog records for the same object. And it was an object that had been owned by john D, the alchemist at the Court of Elizabeth first, and the record in our archival system talked about john D. But the one in our medieval manuscripts cattle didn't because the manuscript itself, you know was annotated by john D but the manuscript itself was written by somebody else. So those manuscript catalogues would think well that's not medieval that's not my, you know just not even thinking about I'm not interested in that that's what I'm going to describe. And so that sifting process that goes on when you describe an object is something that we're not really enter it or haven't interrogated enough, and that trying to kind of surface those issues more and talk about them more. It shows that this activity is much, much more interesting but also much more challenging than, than it's perhaps proceed. And I think of it as some I used to work in dictionaries, many moons ago, and people talk about the dictionary as if this is the source of all authority but the dictionary just creates the dictionary is just created by people like everything else. And so I think it's just recognizing what, what data is and that the data doesn't always tell the whole, well rarely tells the whole story. Yeah, it is said that people are still saying that archivists and librarians are neutral because has never been like that. So we're all part of a system and I don't know a comparison that might be helpful when you talk to people and trying to explain is like saying the internet or Google search is neutral courses not Google is algorithms built by people and there is a book called algorithm of algorithms of oppression can transfer. But I mean there are plenty of studies and evidence that you find things based on a mechanism. So it's not neutral somebody came up with that mechanism and put their biases in their knowledge and or ignorance and so it's the same with archival description and cataloging and it connects also in a way to the idea like we are neutral and we're providing access to everybody we're giving the same resources to everybody. The idea of access of course is not that easy. And there is this idea and diversity like, like the simplistic idea and diversity like we give the same opportunities to everybody. And we give the same access to everybody. You have to look at the history and how people get stopped along the way so let's say everybody can apply for this job great but who had the time and money to get the degrees and the experience and everything. So it saying you're neutral is kind of like denying the complexity of the world and I hope we'll move on one day but Simon. I mean, Richard you look younger than me and you were told that our kids are neutral and this is said. I actually wasn't I studied UCLA where they always told us we're not neutral but it just keeps up keeps coming up in discussions and cataloging especially I'm on a cataloging group for similar work that we've discussed here. And yeah they're still fighting with like colleagues to say we're neutral. Thank you very much and thanks so much hope for that. That was a really good question. I don't think we're seeing any new questions coming in the chat which means I'm going to take the co chairs prerogative and ask one myself. So sort of following on from that really thinking about culture change within our sector. What do panelists think are some of the key issues that need to be tackled within our institutions to make them more open, inclusive and diverse in their in our practices our collections and who we engage with perhaps I could ask Francesca to pick that one up first. And I believe even is on screen so even do you want to go first. Sorry, unmute myself. No, don't worry Simon not to introduce yourself. Hi everybody, I'm Yvonne Button and I'm the scholarly communications manager for the University of Warwick. But this has been an absolutely fascinating afternoon session because I got into scholarly communications via cataloging. So I spent the kind of the early parts of my career working for the University of Birmingham special collections and working in these kinds of areas as well. And as I say I just I wanted to kind of chime in around kind of some of the comments that have been coming out previously. That actually it's a it's a it's a large thread of the literature around cataloging and the act of cataloging about how that can be a radical act, both in a good way and and in a in a bad way. And so the and there was a lot of literature quite philosophical literature that I read when I was starting working in special collections very much around the fact that you needed to be conscious of the power that you were holding as a as a cataloger and about how that could influence how people find things. And as I say, it's one of those areas that is kind of not talked about too often. But, you know, a badly a badly cataloged piece of piece of work be that deliberately or by accident can make a an item vanish from your collection. And it's a it is this kind of this area looking at metadata can have such a huge influence. And I think it's it's fantastic that this is being talked about more and coming up into the in in in people's estimation and ideas. I was not trying to get out of the question. Thanks so much. I missed your hearing on my screen. No problem. Thank you. I mean, that's a million dollar question to me is about just give up power. Let people in and support them and don't ask them to become like you. I mean, where I work. We are constantly fighting like kind of assimilation and it's very subtle is done in a million different ways and they break you down in different ways and you become a different person and then you figure that out and you go back to your regular self. Leaving here in in this part of Texas we're in a small town that is much more traditional than other parts of Texas is not Houston is not Austin where of course this much more open. And if there's a lot of diversity a lot of great people but you feel the tradition and the pressure and the conservative attitude conservative in a bad way like kind of saying that diversity is not important. Now on paper there are great things like plans of the university and everything but in reality is a group of us doing this work and it's not everybody. And I so I kind of like, I understand more about diversity now that I'm here because I've always been very liberal environments before and you kind of like think everybody things like me we're all good. I actually see how my colleagues are treated the challenges they have. So to me, my own growth has come from my talking with people, but really the key point to me is, we have to really give up our power let people in and support them so don't ask them to assimilate. Because, like having people they say we have people from diverse communities but then they have to dress like us talk like us think like us and do everything we do, and that's not diversity. So you really have to open up your mind to a completely different system that you might not have thought of before is really hard I don't know when and how it's going to happen but I'm personally trying to do that. Even higher so to me is all about really hiring people and really let them be themselves and give them the freedom to bring out their values and their points of views. And then we do change but it is extremely complicated so kind of rambling on but there isn't an easy answer but I just see the main issue here being like maintaining a strong system and pretending we're getting more open but we're not. Thanks Francesca. Richard, can I come to you next on that question about culture change. Yeah, I mean, just reflecting on on what Francesca's just said, I guess about the, the scale of the change that some that's required and I, I'd like to maybe draw attention to a comment in the chat from Christopher at well hollow at least the, the first half of Christopher's comments on how to find the titles he's referring to is really difficult but I guess the point Christopher is making is around going back to a previous conversation around the sciences and diversity in the sciences and how, how some people have suggested to him and colleagues that they'd like more than just examples in some of the undergraduate textbooks that they're, they're working with and I, I guess what that common flags to me is just how kind of deep rooted some of the lack of diversity is in our, in our institutions and therefore just how, how kind of difficult that is to, to change and how, how whole scale some of the change needs to be and I, I'm not sure this is answering your question at all Simon but I guess from my point of view. It's, it's important to recognize that and I guess start working towards change and that process and not be afraid that we're not going to sort of get there immediately or, or quickly. I say I'm sure that doesn't answer your question. Thank you Richard. Judy. I think I'm just thinking about what Francesca was saying I think Oxford is has a certain image, I think that you probably all have a certain image when you think of Oxford but the University of Oxford takes diversity inclusion very seriously and you know there, there's a lot of work in this area. There is, you know, a sense that tradition, not a sort of negative sense of tradition but tradition can itself kind of exclude or minimize participation for certain people or make them feel less welcome or you know that there needs to be a way of celebrating tradition and in ways that doesn't limit us and doesn't limit participation from others and I think we're not politically conservative I would say in the way that Francesca was suggesting that kind of environment. But it's still quite a sort of traditional university and you know we're not, you know we've got a lot of baggage. And so I think it's sort of looking past that and how can we break that down a bit and I think that that's something that at the most senior level at the university. We're very much prioritising so I think you do need to kind of senior buy in to to push this and make it important through institutions. Judith, I'm going to go to Jill now because I think there's a question that in the chat that follows on from this around leadership, Jill. Yeah, there's a really great question from earlier in the chat. I just wanted to say thank you for all those fantastic comments there from the panelists. It's, you know, it really does I'm reflecting on this for our practice here at Cambridge it really starts with us. I think that's coming across really strongly we have to make that personal commitment. I was really fortunate to be in a meeting with colleagues in the university libraries around thinking about what inclusive leadership means, and that was a fantastic conversation to have. The university is running courses around that so there is opportunities coming out from that personal approach, but then the next step is how do we take that out colleagues how do we take that out within the institution. And the question earlier in the chat from Chris Launder is along similar lines it's looking at, we're all doing pockets of good practice here around decolonisation on a project basis. And what they're asking that is, is that the way to approach it do we let those projects kind of work out over time, and some kind of orthodoxy of approach emerges over time. So would national or international bodies take a leadership role here and speed things up. So it's an opportunity for us to reflect together. I mean, especially for the UK and the SDH and network but for all of us really, what is the leadership role that we can be taking here and how does that play out alongside individual projects and pockets of best practice. You want me to respond to that. Um, should, should there be national and international bodies taking a leadership role yes please absolutely. And that that I think will make everybody's life a little bit easier he wants to to engage in this work. And, and also without without wishing to sort of be too political about it this kind of manufacturing of culture wars and you know, referring to people who are woke as a pejorative term and woke ism and things like that. You can as a, as a sector and I think libraries sit within the wider heritage sector of a UK library sit within the wider heritage sector I think we need to push back on some of, some of these ideas and, you know, get away from just a really simplistic idea that it's all about issues and destroying people's histories or something which absolutely this work I don't think is about and I think we need as loud a voice to say that it's not about this it's about being inclusive it's about nuance it's about greater understanding not less understanding. And I think I think to be effective that has to come from from those national and and international bodies at a, at a more local level, what I would say from a Sussex perspective is we've got some, some colleagues in the library team who I think all of all of my colleagues in the library team are keen to work in in inclusive ways and we have some people that when it comes to decolonization who are, I think, better informed than others or at least can see how the activities link more directly to their particular particular roles. And I think we ought to encourage those people to do the work, if they want to, and we shouldn't try and try and stifle that. I think where leadership comes in is we need to sort of harness some of that enthusiasm and make sure that the changes are perhaps systematically made and structurally made. I guess for those of us who are who are really enthusiastic about it and want to run at a million miles an hour and make all the changes possible we have to understand that possibly those leaders above us or senior managers above us have have their own concerns and we need to find a way to balance these two, two things up and so certainly when we were writing the decolonization statement at in the library at Sussex. It was a, it was a group effort with a kind of a good and I think robust conversation around what's achievable what maybe isn't achievable right now but could be in the future with a little bit of leadership and articulating something that is that is both ambitious and realistic and you know listening to those people who want to be massively ambitious but also listening to those people who need to be realistic and finding that that middle ground I think is is really important but but yeah if anyone from national or international institutions is listening to this, please, please shout out, be vocal. To make a quick comment about statues. We have one on campus here is a confederate general also president of the university in the past, part of a tradition at a and we've been trying to get the statue to go not go forever just go in a museum just not be in the middle of campus with people paying homage to it simply because our students and colleagues of color say you're celebrating people who add enslaved other people and you're dismissing my history you say you want to save your history but you're dismissing my history. So it does unfortunately send a very powerful negative message to people. So it's not about raising history because you have to keep it somewhere in a museum somewhere, but it has to like not be a spotlight on it as a wonderful thing like we have here so it's really complex. And yeah people will react saying you want to raise history but that's not the point that's just like acknowledging the effect on other people. Shall I jump in. Judith, please, please stay. Thank you. I think just on the on the national international leadership point agree with with Richard that if you know some national leadership I think are a UK have done a good job in sort of surfacing the work in all sorts of areas and bringing us together. I think that the library sector is very well placed to work collaboratively and to sort of share through case studies and best practice and just looking to see, you know, I'm listening to the, to the discussion today I can already see areas that would be helpful for us to look at an I think that's very useful. I think in a local level in Oxford, I think we've found the museums to be very interesting. Sort of offering a model to us so the pit rivers in Oxford have dealt with decolonization issues very effectively I think and they've sort of really prioritized tackling that and I think that's been quite good for the for the rest of the organization to look at and see how that's done so I think we can look at the museum sector and indeed other other sectors and see what we can learn externally as well as from from within. Thanks, Judith, I'd agree with that and another recent example is the work that one of my colleagues at the University of Leicester, Professor Colin Fowler has been very heavily involved with with the working with the National Trust, and how the stories of some of their properties have been told is a really good example and also an example of how brave and you need to be sometimes in terms of some of the response which I'm sure people will have seen in the National Press around the work that the National Trust have been doing recently. Do we have any more questions in the in the chat, Jill. We do have some fantastic comments I can't see any questions coming through but people who aren't looking at the chat have a look there are fantastic comments references. It's some great work from OCLC being flagged up around this area as well. I think Francesca is asking here to come back in around exhibitions and budget we do have time for that so that will be fantastic. Francesca if you want to come back in on that topic. Very quick. Yeah, I've actually I wrote an article a couple years ago and I had some discussion about budgets and is a struggle for a lot of people so I actually, I haven't updated in a while but I started in just a Google sheet with like what we spent on different things like getting things printed. Like I like sometimes to bring like big things. So, and just figure out costs and also compare like where is cheaper to go but you still get really in quality. And then I am not particularly handy but I call this who can make anything out of anything like give them a piece of fabric and they can make great things we have a preservation department they just get like acid free cardboard and they make a cradle. You just kind of engage everybody so up here we have a good budget. So I have no complaints. I have done exhibits with like all local institutions I did one with the African American Museum for about $800 that is still quite a bit of money for a lot of people. But I worked, like when I was a professor we did an exhibition with my students using what was in special collections so we didn't spend any money but yes there was infrastructure there so it's a pretty deep question. So some money has to spend some point on something but I really think you can reuse a lot of things you can be crafty and make everything look good. The main point is to keep in mind preservation so never heard me book never break the spine, no more than 90 degrees, but I've done that sometimes with just fabric which is fabric we had washed and it wasn't transferring anything, but you can kind of make a cradle out of almost anything that is safe enough for the materials. The display cases are a big thing because even a basic display case cost a lot of money. So when I was in the job I had before coming here at the Stratford Festival in Canada. They had vitrines display cases that they used like in the shop years before and they got passed down to us and we kind of re-purposed them, we had them painted and they look good. They were not display cases that were not made by super duper companies but they worked so sometimes you can and we've had one case where we were getting rid of older display cases we gave them which are still really nice but we were. trying to be more accessible so getting rid of those because they were really not very accessible we gave them to a new museum that was starting. You can be creative ask around and do things so basically is just make sure that you're protecting and honoring what you're displaying but you can be creative so yeah if people want to know more about budgets, I can talk about what I've done, but. Also you have to like get out of preconceptions like right now I'm trying to be a little more environmentally friendly as much as you can be in a special collections that runs your conditioning all the time. It takes us really strong but I'm getting away from phone call so my labels now are made so they're accessible in terms of the contrast but I print them on like heavy car stock. They are not fancy I make them as good looking as possible they're not the fancy phone core or the fancy plastic, but I can recycle them at the end of the day they don't go in a landfill. And that's also cheaper so there are things that you can do that get away from like the traditional I have to have phone core, which if you do it in houses one thing but if you get it printed is really expensive if you go to shop. And so little things to think about and also like when I started here there was the idea we have to have a catalog for every exhibition, and it was done in house but it was still expensive to print. So I kind of getting away from the full catalog you can do a PDF online, which still takes time but at least you don't have the cost of print. So there are a lot of things you can think about and sometimes it's about this mentally preconceptions and expectations and like educate people like we can do it differently and be more economic and hopefully more environmentally friendly. Thanks Francesca and we are nearly out of time now and there's a really great comment in the chat from Merrily about reimagining descriptive workflows that people may wish to watch out for a new report coming soon. Before I hand over to Jill to conclude the session and what any of our do any of our panelists have a final thought for the for the afternoon. Judith, maybe I'll come to you first. Pressure. No, I think it's been a really good session really interesting it's really encouraging actually to see so much comment in the chat and this is obviously an area that that collectively we really do feel is important so I think that there's this kind of a momentum here that we can draw upon and try and share information and best practice amongst ourselves so I hope that this conversation will continue after the conference finishes. I agree thanks Judith Richard you have any final, final thoughts. I'll maybe just reflect on a comment from Chris Bradford I think in the comments that says do panellists having a guidance on best practice for purchasing from the, the global south. I suppose what I would say to that is thinking about how ideas went about collecting materials and obtaining materials in part through academics gathering, gathering things up. It seems to me that we need to work with our academics to collaborate and they can, in this particular instance help us to collect materials but collaborate more generally, and it seems to me that as a sector, if we're looking at purchasing purchasing a diverse type of materials then we need to be putting pressure on our, on our suppliers and what that that all points to is if we're going to be successful in in this work I think we have to work together proactively and widely and I guess that's that would be my, my final thought. Thanks Richard and I'll come back to Francesca. So I think everybody was a fantastic discussion and I hope will continue and thank you to the organizers and everybody's been wonderful so really honoured to be here.