A Statement on Potentially Harmful Content in the Dole Archives

The Dole Archives includes materials that document our diverse American experience across many decades. The collections can reflect biases, language, perspectives, and beliefs of the time in which they were created and should be considered records of the era in which they were produced.

Collection Items

To preserve an accurate historical record, we follow best practices of using language provided by creators and previous stewards of the material, as well as language from the original material. This helps to provide contextual information about the collections, creators, and the conditions the material originates from. We also do not obscure any potentially harmful content within the collection items themselves.

Item Description

We are developing and implementing policies to assess and update existing archival descriptions as well as prevent harmful language in new staff-generated descriptions. We are committed to creating inclusive descriptions that document the history of our diverse communities in a respectful manner.

Help Us Improve

We recognize that this work must be ongoing and seek to better understand the experiences of those that interact with our harmful content. Any feedback, suggestions, or questions may be directed to dolearchives@ku.edu.