Inclusive Cataloguing at the Historic England Archive
In this, our fourth in a series of blogposts from the Inclusive Cataloguing Working Group of the Diversity and Inclusion Allies, Kate Bevan looks at how Historic England Archive is addressing the issue of inclusive cataloguing.
Inclusive Cataloguing at the Historic England Archive
The Historic England Archive is the nation’s archive of the historic environment. It is one of the largest publicly accessible archives in England. With its roots in the work of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (established in 1908) and the National Buildings Record (established in 1941), the Archive’s purpose was to collect and document the architectural and archaeological environment of England and to record buildings under threat from wartime bombing. Traditionally, the Archive’s collections focused on documenting ancient monuments and historic buildings considered to be important or representative of certain periods or social groups. This resulted in records of cathedrals, churches, castles and country houses dominating the Archive’s holdings. It was not until the late 20th century that thematic recording projects considered building types that better reflected the heritage of a broader range of society. However, the principal motivation for undertaking the projects related to risk of change rather than the heritage of the masses.
Historic England has recently launched its Strategy for Inclusion, Diversity and Equality, and this will help shape and embed inclusion into cataloguing practice within the Archive. The strategy’s vision states that: “Heritage is for everyone. The work we do ensures that a diverse range of people are able to connect with, enjoy and benefit from the historic environment”. The organisation seeks to “ensure our work is accessible and relevant to everyone who lives and visits here”, and that our work “is delivered in inclusive, participatory and collaborative ways”.
In light of this, how can we ensure that our cataloguing practice is more inclusive?
What We Catalogue
The Historic England Archive holds over 15 million items, and like most archives has an extensive backlog of uncatalogued material. Some of our collections have very poor legacy descriptions, and there are some that we know little about. Over the past seven years, the Archive has implemented a programme of backlog collection assessments. Cataloguers research uncatalogued collections and evaluate their contents. Collection descriptions are updated and keywords added, and these backlog collections are given priority ratings based on several criteria.
By doing this we have a greater understanding of our collections – not only of what we have, but (arguably more importantly) of what we don’t have. This enables us to identify gaps in our collections, and to acknowledge areas where we are not representative of the diverse range of people we seek to engage. Archives generally, and often the stories their collections can tell, are constrained by the collecting policies of previous generations. Understanding this is the first step towards shaping a more inclusive collecting policy and ensuring that what we collect now helps to represent and engage a more diverse range of people with heritage. The Strategy for Inclusion, Diversity and Equality outlines a number of priority audiences, and increasingly we are looking to work with these under-represented communities to create and collect new material that will help to make the Archive more inclusive and diverse.
As an archive we also seek to ensure that the collections we prioritise for cataloguing are those which have the potential to engage and represent our increasingly diverse society. Where in the past focus may have been on collections documenting architecturally grand buildings, we now seek out collections that help to document the heritage of ordinary people – housing estates, pre-fabs, factories, power stations – and that illustrate the way in which people interact with buildings around them. Social as well as architectural history plays an increasingly important part in the way we prioritise our work.
How We Catalogue
The Archive has carried out user testing on its online catalogue, and the results of this will help to inform changes we make to cataloguing practice. As archivists, we are all familiar with collection hierarchies and archival terminology, but it has become increasingly clear that online searching by the general user doesn’t necessarily follow an established hierarchy. For many of our users, their interests lie in a certain building of place, and that often cuts across several collections. An online search can be difficult to understand as results can range from collection level to item level, and archival terminology can be difficult for the general user to interpret.
Historically, the Archive has catalogued records strictly in line with ISAD(G) guidelines. We use architectural terminology as dictated by an organisation-wide Monuments Thesaurus, which is also used for the National Heritage List descriptions. But this can create barriers to access and understanding of our holdings. Online searching has made it increasingly clear that relying on users to dig down through hierarchies is, in many cases, a thing of the past. Item level descriptions need to include information that previously may have been reserved for collection descriptions. We have taken steps to ensure that the language and terminology we use is more easily understandable by a wider range of people from different backgrounds, and we have begun adding free text keywords to aid access and make searching easier. We also check legacy records for offensive and outdated terminology, and update them accordingly.
Who Catalogues?
As a workforce, we are not diverse, and this has an impact on the catalogue records we produce. But how can we address this? We know that different people have different perspectives on heritage, and that people who are familiar with an area or a building will have more stories to tell and can provide deeper context. By opening our catalogues to the public, we will seek to include a greater range of perspectives, stories and memories, and this will help to make our catalogues more accessible and more representative of a wider range of people.
We are in the early stages of a pilot crowdsourcing project to add different ‘voices’ to our catalogue. We believe that incorporating these different perspectives will enable a deeper understanding of our records, helping more diverse groups of people to feel connected and engaged with the Archive and the wider historic environment. We want people to actively participate in catalogue creation, and to share their stories and memories with people both now and in the future. By doing so we can demonstrate with confidence that we are the nation’s archive of the historic environment.
Thumbnail image photo credit Gabriel McCallin via Unsplash