While there has been significant scholarly attention to critical cataloguing in archives and libraries, as well as to diversity, equity, and inclusion work in museums more generally, relatively little is known about how museums are engaging in critical cataloguing work.
Erin Canning (University of Oxford, UK) addresses this gap through the combination of a review of relevant academic, grey, trade, and popular literature and an interview study conducted with two dozen critical cataloguing practitioners working in museums and independently across the UK, USA, and Canada.
The findings identify 29 distinct types of projects and activities currently being pursued in museums under the category of critical cataloguing work.
Based on these findings, this paper proposes a taxonomy of critical cataloguing projects and activities in order to characterise and thus better understand this area of museum practice.
