Princeton Library Slaps Trigger Warnings to “Offensive” Archive Content
Jose Nino
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Princeton University will soon tack on additional trigger warnings to its library archives after a focus group convened to identify content that “marginalized communities” may deem “harmful” or “offensive.”
Toward the end of January, library archivists hosted a focus group study concerning “harmful content” within the Princeton University Library’s online archives, per a post published on January 16 on the university’s Special Collections blog.
“As part of inclusive and reparative description efforts, archival staff in Special Collections have recently begun to implement harmful content mediation features as a way to mitigate harm for researchers, particularly those from marginalized communities, who encounter damaging, injurious, or otherwise hurtful description and/or collection content,” the post stated.
Their group study had the goal of listening and understanding students’ thoughts regarding “harmful content” and the way that the library tackles it, per the blog post.
“In particular, we are interested in hearing from those who identify as member(s) of marginalized communities as well as those who are interested in archives, archival research, and social justice,” the post highlighted.
The researchers said they expect that the study will help the library become more effective in policing its archives for content that may trigger people.
Per its website, Princeton Library has featured content, or trigger warnings, on materials at least since 2022.
The library website also calls on individuals to inform staff if they discover “problematic language” in materials, due to how “terminology evolves over time” and “efforts to create respectful and inclusive descriptions must be ongoing.”
Trigger warnings have been adopted by many universities in the last few years. Advisories concerning potentially troubling content have appeared on content ranging from course descriptions and campus crime alerts to high-profile novels such as “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” and timeless pieces of literature such as “1984” and “The Old Man and the Sea.”
Universities in the US have gone completely off the deep end. Hopefully, the Right takes power and begins smacking around the cultural Left in universities nationwide.
If we want to preserve any semblance of civil liberties and freedom in the US, the first set of institutions that need to be purged are universities.
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