Structuring Critical Cataloguing in Museums

A Taxonomy of Museum-Based Critical Cataloguing Project and Action Types

Abstract

Museums are responding to the presence of offensive, biased, and harmful language in catalogue records through the practice of ‘critical cataloguing’: an umbrella term encompassing a range of tactics such as revising records, applying content warnings, adding paradata, and more. While there has been significant scholarly attention to critical cataloguing in archives and libraries, as well as to diversity, equity, and inclusion work in museums more generally, relatively little is known about how museums are engaging in critical cataloguing work. This paper addresses this gap through the combination of a review of relevant academic, grey, trade, and popular literature and an interview study conducted with two dozen critical cataloguing practitioners working in museums and independently across the UK, USA, and Canada. The findings identify 29 distinct types of projects and activities currently being pursued in museums under the category of critical cataloguing work. Based on these findings, this paper proposes a taxonomy of critical cataloguing projects and activities in order to characterise and thus better understand this area of museum practice. This paper offers the first comprehensive analysis of museum-based critical cataloguing, providing an overview of what critical cataloguing looks like as it is happening in museum contexts today.