These are the principles that guide us when developing new content, opening new discussions, and generally engaging with eLabs and its community. We are thankful to the Center for Black Digital Research, Digital Humanities Summer Institute, Scholars’ Lab, and US Latino Digital Humanities Center for their statements of ethics, conduct, and inclusion, which we looked to when developing our own principles. We hold this statement and these principles as living, meaning they are to be revisited, re-evaluated, and renewed frequently as we work to create a space that welcomes, values, and empowers all practitioners.
Inclusivity
We welcome practitioners from all identities, disciplines, affiliations, and levels of experience. We welcome projects from all stages of a project lifecycle—from projects in the brainstorming phase, to those that have already ended. And we welcome the use of any tools or methodologies that creatively promote the discoverability, accessibility, or imaginability of source materials. This is a place where participants can trust that the exclusionary practices and systems of institutional academia will not be carried forward and that each unique contribution will be welcomed, respected, and heard.
Diversity of Practice
We recognize that the practices and goals of editing and recovery are different for each practitioner and project. We celebrate this diversity of practice and acknowledge that it is essential in representing the wide variety of lived experiences and forms of memory making and transmission in our world.
Diversity of Practitioners
We reject the idea that the practices of editing and recovery are done only by scholars or academics. We recognize that practitioners exist within every community and that every community engages in unique acts of memory making and transmission. We celebrate the diversity of the identities, disciplines, affiliations, expertises, perspectives, and traditions represented by practitioners everywhere.
Project Autonomy
We are committed to supporting the enfranchisement and autonomy of practitioners and their communities. In our pursuit to serve as a space for information, discussion, and experimentation, we aim to avoid the use of authoritative language and roles, and we pledge to respect and uphold the physical and intellectual goals of all practitioners’ projects.
Open Ecosystem
In seeking to create a space for experimentation, collaboration, cross-fertilization, and co-creation, we challenge ourselves and other practitioners to come to this space with a mind open to listening and learning. We believe this to mean our participation in the following activities: sharing the discussion space equally, creating room for reflection and growth within our own practice, asking questions, and welcoming new ideas, concepts, perspectives and opportunities.
Accountability & Adaptability
We recognize that in order to welcome and empower all practitioners, we must actively and persistently engage in the work of making this a respectful and inclusive space that makes all individuals feel welcome to join and participate. We pledge to make ourselves open and responsive to community feedback. We pledge to challenge ourselves to think expansively about the practices of editing and recovery by consistently engaging in this space and elsewhere with practitioners and projects of all disciplines.
Collegiality
We pledge to treat all practitioners with respect and to foster a space free of harassment and hate. We expect the same from all members of the eLabs community. We encourage you to visit our Code of Conduct to learn more about the behaviors and language we do not condone, and our policies for instituting a code of conduct.
