Your Name and Title: Ashley Aberg, Reference Archivist
Library, School, or Organization Name: The LuEsther T. Mertz Library at New York Botanical Garden
Area of the World from Which You Will Present: New York (EST)
Language in Which You Will Present: English
Target Audience(s): Librarians and archivists, especially those involved in descriptive work.
Short Session Description (one line): The importance of inclusive description in cultivating, maintaining, and deepening community relationships.
Full Session Description (as long as you would like): Descriptive terms are often sourced from publications and lexicons created by predominantly white, male, heterosexual, and able-bodied individuals. The terms that come from these thesauri generally do not describe people who live in bodies and communities outside of that narrow scope in a way that they would find useful, and are in fact often actively harmful to those people and communities. In this short presentation I will discuss the importance of inclusive description work and inclusive cataloging, along with ways in which NYBG and the library are engaging the community to try and bridge the gap between what might often be viewed as a "hard science" research-oriented institution in which they worry they will not be welcome to contribute to the discussion.
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