The purpose of this library is to collate guidance and research available to support galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM), and the wider UK heritage sector to engage critically in professional practices that involve recording, writing, and generating knowledge about art and artefacts. The specific focus is on addressing structural racism and the still prevalent hegemony of traditional, western, colonial forms of knowledge production.

The Towards a National Collection Foundation project, Provisional Semantics presented the contention that whilst many in the heritage sector recognise the need to interrogate and redress problematic language and representations and there is a drive to ‘decolonise’, the sector lacked research and guidance around what is required in terms of ethical methodologies and practical and attitudinal shifts’ and that this ‘prevents sustainable change from taking place’ – that is, how this work could and should be done and how to keep doing it.