2025 EBSCO User Group

Research databases are both repositories of diverse forms of knowledge and instigators of knowledge production that require the community-driven, collaborative efforts of humans. Three panelists and a moderator will discuss how, with thoughtful cultivation and use, research databases can account for various practices of knowledge gathering, preservation, and creation. Case studies will include a classroom experiment in which students gather and then visualize metadata from the MLA International Bibliography (MLAIB) to identify patterns in and omissions from the scholarship, with an eye toward history and new directions for research. The goal is to develop critical literacies about power relations built into bibliographic classification and indexing, as well as generate ideas for restorative description. Drawing on experience developing databases of Indigenous texts and iconography, one panelist will consider Western versus Indigenous ways of knowing: What are some of the differences between Western and Indigenous ways of interrogating received knowledge, and how might a database serve and promote Indigenous ways of knowing? What community, cultural, linguistic sensitivities, and other factors and etiquette need to be considered when building a database that serves Indigenous ways of knowing? Throughout, panelists will reflect on how the MLAIB bolsters community in the work that they do.