Guest Speakers Karla Roig Blay and Karina Sánchez

Tuesday, April 22 2:00pm EDT / 11:00am PDT

Registration opens April 8

Description:

Academic libraries are grappling with the presence of Harmful Content and Description within their collections, but there is limited research on managing potential harmful content. We will present our research which focuses on the management and presentation of harmful content, specifically visual and/or auditory, in digital collections with the intent of minimizing possible harm caused to collection users without proper content warning and labeling. We will denote the differences between harmful description and harmful content, provide four levels of engagement when presenting and managing potentially harmful visual and audio content, and showcase some examples and recommendations that varied institutions have implemented.

Bios:
Karla Roig Blay (she/her) is the Digital Preservation Coordinator at the University of Texas at Austin where she manages the library’s tape archive for long term digital preservation. Her professional interests are focused on diversity and equity, digital scholarship, latin american studies, and digital stewardship of cultural heritage materials. Currently, she is a member of various working groups at her institution, including the Harmful Content and Language Working Group where she has been actively involved in advocating for the appropriate management of harmful content in digital collections.

Karina Sánchez (she/her) serves as the Scholars Lab Librarian at the University of Texas at Austin, where she is committed to advancing digital scholarship research through the innovative digital scholarship center, Scholars Lab. In her previous role as a Diversity Resident Librarian at UT Austin, she devoted time to developing workflows to improve the process of displaying and managing harmful content in libraries and special collections.