The Peripheral Manuscripts: Digitizing Medieval Manuscript Collections in the Midwest project is committed to providing a productive, inclusive and welcoming environment for discussion and collaboration about digitization, discovery, and preservation of medieval manuscript materials. To support this and to further the goals of the project, we expect all participants to follow our Community Agreements and Code of Conduct, including project staff, project partners, meeting participants, and other contributors.
The Community Agreements outline ways in which we encourage and expect each other to hold safe, engaging, and respectful discussions. The Code of Conduct outlines behaviors which will not be tolerated, how to report concerns or incidents, and how the code will be applied.
Our project seeks to address the broader challenge of how to improve archival discovery and delivery, or what people and systems do to find, access, and use materials from archives and special collections. We recognize that this work is supported by a wide range of responsibility and kinds of expertise, across institutional contexts, levels of resourcing, and the types of communities we serve. We also recognize that people may be discouraged or excluded from these conversations in a local context based on their identity or systemic issues including racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, and more. To this end, we have established a core set of principles for the project:
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We believe everyone has something to contribute; not everyone needs to be a self-identified expert.
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We focus on shared and holistic concerns and recommendations, rather than focusing on specific technologies or tools.
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We enable the adaptability of recommendations across contexts, communities, levels of resourcing.
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We develop recommendations consciously as an inclusive expression of professional ethics and values.
To be truly transformational, our work must be conducted in a space that acknowledges the power dynamics of bringing together workers across professional contexts, roles, and job classifications, while also recognizing institutional privilege and the lack of representation of marginalized peoples within special collections, archive, library, disciplinary departments, and technology sectors.
We expect all participants to practice community by agreeing to the following:
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To ensure only one person speaks at a time, and consider pausing to allow those who need more time to process or interject in conversation to do so.
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To make space and take space - encourage and yield the floor to those whose viewpoints may be under-represented in a group, and take space made for you as you’re able.
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To listen to and respect a person’s description of their experiences, including but not limited to those related to marginalization and discrimination.
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To recognize the interdependent nature of our work to support discovery and delivery of manuscript materials.
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To acknowledge that choices around practice, implementation, and technology vary widely and can be dependent on the availability of resources, and to respect our work as incremental.
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To provide a space where everyone can feel comfortable participating, even if they don’t use specific terminology or use the perfect way to express their ideas or insights.
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To embrace curiosity and creativity, allowing for the opportunity to try new ideas, consider other perspectives, and establish new patterns.
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To use welcoming language (including a person’s pronouns) and favor gender-neutral collective nouns (“folks” or “y’all,” not “guys”).
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To give credit where it's due, and to uplift each other’s work and ideas.
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To accept critique and feedback graciously, and to offer it constructively.
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To seek concrete ways to make our physical spaces and online resources more universally accessible.
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To acknowledge the difference between intent and impact, and to look for ways to take responsibility for any negative impact that we have.
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To be aware of time, respecting the commitment of all participants and project staff to accomplish the goals of the meeting.
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To take the moments that everyone needs to care for ourselves and their community, by paying attention to the needs of your body and mind, and to the welfare of those around us.
The Peripheral Manuscripts project seeks to provide participants with opportunities for collaboration that are free from all forms of harassment and inclusive of all people. All communication should be appropriate for a professional audience including people of many different backgrounds. Verbal comments that reinforce social structures of domination related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, national or regional origin, body size, accent, race, age, religion, or other marginalized characteristics are inappropriate. Do not insult or put down other participants. Be careful in the words that you choose. Sexist, racist, and other exclusionary jokes are not appropriate for the meeting.
Harassment is understood as any behavior that threatens or demeans another person or group, or produces an unsafe environment. It includes offensive verbal comments or non-verbal expressions that reinforce social structures of domination; sexual or discriminatory images in public spaces (including online); deliberate intimidation, stalking, following; threats or incitement of violence; photography or recording without clear permission; sustained disruption of presentations or discussion; inappropriate physical contact; and unwelcome sexual attention.
The video presentations and discussions will be recorded and made available to project partners for internal use. A subset or all of the presentations may be shared more publicly (via Indiana University’s institutional repository or project-specific sites like GitHub), but not without written consent. Meetings that take place in break-out rooms will not be recorded.
We ask that you not photograph or take screen-shots of fellow participants without permission of all those being captured. Please ensure when taking group photos that everyone in the picture agrees as to where the photograph will be shared.
Live-tweeting and similar public-facing posts on social media are encouraged. The project benefits from wider exposure and multiple points of view that may not be represented in “the room.” The project hashtag is #midwestmss and the Twitter handle is @peripheralmss. Please keep in mind the following when posting publicly: 1) use attribution by name or social media handle and/or through quotation; 2) consider the wider public and provide context when possible; and 3) when expressing disagreements, please do so constructively, professionally and courteously.
We also respect that certain points of discussion are not intended for external consumption. Please inform the designated facilitators as soon as possible if you are generally uncomfortable with live-tweeting or related public-facing posting. We also encourage you to let us know not to tweet/post-publicly before you share information–whether as a presenter or a participant generating discussion. Facilitators will do their best to take note when tweeting/public-posting is not encouraged and will watch the twitter feed in case interventions are needed.
All project participants — including the project team, partners, facilitators, and participants — are expected to abide by this Code of Conduct in person, in online spaces, and while present in any groups of project participants inside or outside a formal project event (e.g. including receptions and informal gatherings). Participants violating the Code of Conduct will be warned and may be asked to leave an event, and in some cases, may be asked to no longer participate in the project. If you are being harassed, witness another participant being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact a person listed below.
The project team and designated facilitators will be on hand to respond to Code of Conduct violations and assist in following the Community Agreements. If you witness, suspect, or are the target of a violation of the Code of Conduct, contact one of the listed people below.
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Michelle Dalmau -- mdalmau@indiana.edu
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Liz Hebbard -- ehebbard@iu.edu
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Sarah Noonan -- snoonan@saintmarys.edu
This Community Agreements and Code of Conduct has been adapted from the document originally created by Stanford University’s Lighting the Way Forum. Their Community Agreements and Code of Conduct was initially developed through consultation of a number of existing sources, including:
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The Collective Responsibility Code of Conduct and Community Agreement
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AORTA’s Anti-Oppressive Facilitation for Democratic Process: Making Meetings Awesome for Everyone
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Seeds for Change’s Group Agreements for Workshops and Meetings
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Valerie Aurora and Mary Gardiner’s How to Respond to Code of Conduct Reports
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Ernesto Priego’s Live-tweeting at Academic Conferences: 10 Rules of Thumb