Hi all:
I’m currently working as a temp at a state university working on content for an upcoming digital repository, which will hold faculty and staff scholarship as well as some materials important to the history of the university. I am writing because I’m doing some research on how academic digital repositories handle sensitive content. Is that something anyone here has experience with? Or, do you have a guide you might suggest? I’m sure it will come up from time to time, but at the moment, I’m dealing with archiving all of the university’s yearbooks back to the 1920s. Unfortunately, the yearbook editors at times included some distasteful content that would be considered sexist and racist now. I’m trying to put together a process by which we can publish and maintain digital copies of items that are important to the university, but also be sensitive to its content and add some sort of warning to content that might upset a reader or viewer. I also want to put together some sort of reporting mechanism to allow the public to flag content like this, since we can’t read through every page of every item we are publishing.
Input/feedback/opinions/process overviews welcome! I hope to put together a process proposal so we can continue to both archive this material for future academic research, but also handle it with care so that any potential users understand they may be viewing offensive content.
Best,
kate