Critcatenate is an effort to keep folks up to date on #critcat efforts with a monthly roundup of news. #critcat is short for critical cataloging, an effort focusing on discussing the ethical implications of library metadata, cataloging, and classification standards, practice, and infrastructure.
#critcat in August 2021:
- ALA Core webinar “Walking the Talk: Realizing Ethical Considerations in Cataloging Work” included an overview of the Cataloguing Code of Ethics.
- Blog post from the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives blog by MLIS student River Freemont: “Exploring Bias and Library of Congress Subject Headings“.
- Responses requested on this survey for archives workers “Identifying Bias and Offensive Language in Legacy Descriptions” from the Leeds Arts & Humanities Research Institute.
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Jenny Schollaert from the National Endowment for the Humanities on “Phantom Records: A Two-Part Series on Searchability and Records in Chronicling America, Part 2,” discussing creating authority records for Black newspaper editors.
- New terms and revisions to MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) include changing “Hispanic Americans” to “Hispanic or Latino”. See Tracy Shields’ Twitter thread about notable revisions.
- ARLIS/NA Artist File Special Interest Group met August 9 to talk about Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion and artist files, with a discussion on how to collect artists’ information, decolonizing subject headings and ensuring inclusion of BIPOC artists.
- Call for blog posts about critical cataloging from the ARLIS Cataloging Section.
- New CCQ article “Cataloging, Consequences, and Creativity: An Essay in Honor of Lynne C. Howarth” discusses Howarth’s approach to cataloging as a liberatory tool for expressing relationality, agency, and empowerment
- A survey report from Backstage Library Works “Managing Authority Control in a Changing Discovery Landscape” showed that more than 70% of responding libraries want to eliminate offensive terms for immigrants and Indigenous peoples in their catalogs. Backstage also featured a LinkedIn post on developing a list of decolonized indigenous peoples terms as well as generating a crosswalk for LGBTQ+ terms in LCSH based on the Homosaurus.
- IFLA session on “Subject to Change: How to Deal With Changes in Subject Information” featured presentations by F. Tim Knight, Violet Fox, & Hollie White
- Dr. Tonia Sutherland at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa has been awarded a 3-year $357,000 grant from the US IMLS Laura Bush 21st Century Librarianship Grant program to study Redescription as Restorative Justice in American Archives.
- New to me, but not new: the Labelling Matters project from Pitt Rivers Museum in the UK, including blog posts about their efforts to redescribe objects respectfully.
- New to me from June 2021: “How Getty Archivists Support Racial Justice: Inside the Ongoing Work to Reexamine Thousands of Records to Create Better and More Equitable Archives” post from the Getty blog by Samantha Ceja, Sara McGillivray, and Helen Kim.
- “Move Over, Melvil! Momentum Grows to Eliminate Bias and Racism in the 145-year-old Dewey Decimal System” article from School Library Journal.
Upcoming:
- “Dewey Really Need This?,” a panel exploring the Dewey Decimal System, streaming and in person, from PMI Victorian History Library in Australia. (Sunday September 19 on Australian time means this will be on Saturday September 18, 11 pm U.S. Central time.) Speakers will discuss the ethical and practical issues of Dewey classification, and how it is used or modified in different institutions today.
- Minitex (Minnesota) Technical Services Symposium is happening online Tuesday November 9. The 2021 theme is “Good Trouble: Activism and Ethics in Technical Services”. Deadline for proposals: September 24.
Please get in touch if I’ve missed anything relevant, I’d be happy to add it to next month’s report!