SNAC records are collectively owned by the entire SNAC community, and we encourage SNAC editors to create, enhance, and edit all SNAC records to make them more accessible, accurate, and informative about the person, organization, family, or resource being described. With this great responsibility comes the need for great care in avoiding edits that may be inaccurate, unhelpful, or do harm. This is particularly needed when editing records of individuals, groups, and resources of underrepresented, marginalized, and indigenous communities.
For this reason, we ask that editors review the editing history of a SNAC record before changing a record to ensure they are not editing information supplied by an editor with greater knowledge and understanding of the community to which the individual, group, or resource belongs. We also remind editors to ground their description in clearly cited evidence from the archival record, or from other sources as necessary to remediate archival gaps and silences.
