Dear Reader,

As we begin to wrap up a year during which we decided to catch up with life by exploring architecture’s ability to evolve in dialogue with society, we are discussing how this exercise can also apply to how we identify with our collection. How can we reinforce its role as both a foundation for research and a body of knowledge against which new readings of the built environment are tested?
 
The CCA Collection can be accessed on-site in our study room, but researchers typically access through our website, specifically through our online search tool that combines results from different databases into a single interface. As with any conventional search engine, queries are made using words, and the search engine pulls up the records that contain those words in their description or cataloguing information.
 
The words used to describe collection objects are therefore key for discovering sources and ideas, increasing access, and eventually advancing knowledge. But we have begun to ask ourselves how is research on our collection is influenced by the language we use to catalogue it.
 
As Martien de Vletter argues in an article we are publishing today, descriptive practices are not neutral. The information included in and excluded from collection descriptions is influenced by professional biases, national and international standards for creating metadata, and terminology that often conveys a particular world view. And while we have traditionally circumscribed the work of interpretation to the domain of the researcher—who incorporates an item into the context of a specific discourse—the technical practice of cataloguing or describing—traditionally the domain of the cataloguer or archivist—might not be as removed from this interpretative work as we often assumed.
 
To address these questions, we have launched a Critical Cataloguing project to review and revise the longstanding practices we have used to describe the objects in our collection, as these descriptions affect and even determine how collection objects are discovered and interpreted, both inside and outside the CCA walls. Any bias embedded in the language and scope of descriptions impacts the new work and ideas they might help to generate. The Critical Cataloguing initiative is a response, albeit partial, to the imperative to foreground voices and subjects that were not recognized in the past and, by extension, to address how the CCA might have replicated or perpetuated colonial dynamics and prioritized certain discourses over others.
 
The project begins by reviewing descriptions and classifications in the Photography collection, with the goal to develop inclusive description and metadata strategies. And though these descriptions are typically the responsibility of librarians, cataloguers, and archivists, those working on CCA exhibitions, public programs, and publications are also joining the endeavour to investigate, review, and revise the language of object descriptions and captions. Together we will critically investigate the stories this language reveals or fails to reveal.
 
These reflections will be presented in a series of articles that will be published in the coming months, which we hope will help to increase the discoverability of histories, narratives, and contexts that would otherwise not appear in object records. The articles will focus on one or multiple objects or documents that the contributors have come across and for which they think the current description is inadequate, misinformed, or simply needs more context.
 
We welcome you, dear Reader, to reflect on, criticize, and respond to our efforts.
 
Yours,
the CCA

P.S. We launched a survey to collect information about the performance of our website. If you are curious and/or willing to participate, please click here.

P.P.S. The position of Administrative Coordinator, Collection is open. We welcome applications until the end of the week.