Repairing the Narrative at UTA Libraries: Working Toward More Inclusive Archival Description

In this chapter, two members from the Committee detail the group’s establishment, initial charge, priorities, and strategies for implementing reparative description to the Libraries’ collections. First, we provide an overview of UTA’s history, documenting its evolution from an all-white institution to one of the most diverse universities in the United States. We then describe the collections housed at UTA Special Collections & Archives and how the collecting scope of the unit has changed over time to better reflect the diversity of the university and the communities it serves. We then transition into how the Committee was established and how its members determined approaches to the work, set priorities, and established goals. We later discuss the stages of implementation and give examples of reparative description work we completed on items in UTA Libraries’ collections. We conclude with a discussion of the challenges to this work and review the Committee’s accomplishments and outcomes.