NOTE TO RESEARCHERS: Beginning in Spring 2023, the Digital Collection Offensive Language Policy was reworked and incorporated into the Presbyterian Historical Society's Statement on Harmful Language in Collections.
The Presbyterian Historical Society's Digital Collections support the society's overarching mission to "collect, preserve, and share the story of the American Presbyterian experience" by collecting, managing, preserving, and increasing access to its digitized and born-digital collections. Digitization allows our historical materials to reach a broader and more diverse audience online, and helps us preserve and share our history – however troubling, unsettling, or complicated it may be.
In this regard, we acknowledge that some content within the Digital Collections may contain images and language that are considered offensive by today’s standards, including the depiction of racist or hateful attitudes toward marginalized communities, and the use of terms that are outdated, insensitive or offensive. We openly reject these biased views, which do not reflect the views of the Presbyterian Historical Society or the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A). However, we recognize that these viewpoints illustrate social mindsets and perspectives of their time, and that such stories cannot be erased when providing a truthful history of who we are. We do not intend to hide any aspects of our collections, and we believe in the importance of fostering access to our resources in a responsible and transparent way. It is our responsibility to make our Digital Collections user-friendly while serving as conscientious stewards of an often complicated history. Within our Digital Collections, we have transcribed titles, captions, and other descriptions provided by creators or former owners of the materials because those titles and descriptions provide important historical context. In addition, providing access to original titles is important for users who may have previously cited an image or resource under that title.
However, we also feel strongly that it is important to reduce the reliance on problematic and outdated terminology for descriptive purposes in our Digital Collections. Thus, beginning in January 2020, we will clearly indicate when titles or descriptions come from an external source or are legacy language. In addition, we will balance original language and descriptions by providing devised descriptions for materials with sensitive or offensive content in order to more responsibly and appropriately describe the resource.Please note that many items were added to our Digital Collections before this policy was established, so some items will not have dual descriptions and titles. Also, we do not provide alternate text when an term is used in the title of a published work ("Black Manifesto"), in the name of an institution ("Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago"), or the text of the document itself. Thus, if you are searching for materials about a particular group, such as African Americans, keep in mind that you may retrieve additional items by searching on outdated terms.
In order to facilitate searching, we have published our crosswalk between offensive/outdated terminology and a) the terms we use as replacements in cataloger-provided titles and descriptions, and b) the subject headings we use to index these materials. The crosswalk includes only words and phrases found in Pearl records. It is not intended as a comprehensive list of offensive and outdated language. We will add new terms as we encounter them in existing Pearl records or newly-digitized material. Read the Terminology Crosswalk (or download PDF version).
If you encounter language in our Digital Collections that you find offensive or harmful, or if you have questions about our policy, please email us so that we can learn and adjust our practices.
