Critcatenate is an effort to keep folks up to date on critcat efforts with a monthly-ish roundup of news. Critcat is short for critical cataloging, focusing on the ethical implications of library metadata, cataloging, and classification standards, practice, and infrastructure.
#critcat in April 2023:
- Request for your participation! Please share, in 50 words or less, why critical cataloging is important to you! Julie Renee Moore is putting together an art exhibit all about reparative description/radical cataloging/inclusive metadata/ethical description and inviting you to be a part of it. Details at: https://cataloginglab.org/quotes
- New blog post: Museum Makers: People Centred Cataloguing by the Powell-Cotton Museum in the UK, describing their reparative description project and “how rethinking cataloguing can lead to a more inclusive approach by sharing, collaborating, and enhancing collections information based on user needs”
- The recently announced grant for the Spanish language translation of Homosaurus catches the eye of Fox News: Hola, Homosaurus: Biden Admin Shells Out Six Figures To Translate Gay Dictionary Into Spanish (news article) and Biden Admin Awards 350,000 of Your Tax Dollars to Create a Spanish Language Version of ‘Homosaurus’ (3-minute video segment presented just a few days before Tucker Carlson was kicked off Fox News)
(Editor’s note: sorry about putting his face here!!) - Another new grant: NEH awards Hula Preservation Society $300K for oral history project news article by Cassie Ordonio, describing a new National Endowment for the Humanities grant to the Kāneʻohe Hula Preservation Society for funding the Hoʻolālā Ulu, Growing Indigenous Hawaiian Knowledge Access project. “The initiative aims to create an Indigenous-centered controlled vocabulary for the nonprofit’s oral history library. The project would also produce guidelines for developing subject headings and preferred terms.”
- New blog post: Q&A: Developing a new Spanish-language controlled vocabulary of LGBTQIA+ terms by Lauren Kirschman, an interview with Homosaurus editorial board member Marika Cifor
- New blog post: Problematic Metadata: Origins and Solutions by Jamie Carlstone, sharing work done at Northwestern University Libraries
- New blog post: The Power of Words to Increase Equity and Access: The Ingalls Library DEI Initiatives by Chloe Misorski, describing changes of language describing Asian, Indigenous, Latine, and undocumented people at the Cleveland Museum of Art
- New blog post: Queering the Library: Naming the Subject Is an Act of Power by Margaret Breidenbaugh at the American Studies Journal blog, discussing critical cataloging past and present and highlighting the formation and work of the Gender and Sexuality SACO Funnel
- New article: Decolonizing the Authority File: Creating Contexualized Access to the University of Calgary’s Indigenous Authors Collection by Susan Dahl and Kaia MacLeod, in the International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion.
- New article: The Cataloguing Code of Ethics 2021: conception, community and continuation by Jane Daniels and Diane Rasmussen Pennington, in Art Libraries Journal.
- New article: Describing Special Collections: Two Projects to Modernize the RBMS Controlled Vocabularies by Brenna Bychowski, Ryan Hildebrand, Sarah Hoover, and Lauren Reno, in Cataloging & Classification Quarterly. Includes information about a project to expand terminology for prejudicial materials in rare materials.
- New project: Project to review the names of indigenous groups, describing efforts to review and revise Indigenous group names in HAPI (Hispanic American Periodicals Index), which provides article indexing for scholarly journals published around the world on Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latinx communities in the United States.
- New special issue available: Art Libraries Journal Volume 48, Special Issue 2 is focused on Cataloguing Ethics. Articles are based on some of talks from the ARLIS UK & Ireland Cataloguing and Classification Committee’s Ethics video series:
- Viewpoint: Ethical cataloguing in action
- The Cataloguing Code of Ethics 2021: conception, community and continuation by Jane Daniels, Diane Rasmussen Pennington
- Challenging legacies at the British Library by Alan Danskin
- Indigenous languages in the British Library catalogue: a critique of ‘Indians of North America—Languages’ by Rebecca Slatcher
- Teaching cataloguing ethics: an exploration of an ethics-infused knowledge organization curriculum by Deborah Lee
- New presentation recordings available: NETSL 2023 Annual Conference: Passion into Action: Your Initiative in Technical Services, sponsored by the New England Technical Services Librarians, was held in April 2023, and recordings are now available on YouTube. Sessions include:
- Our Metadata, Ourselves: The Trans Metadata Collective presented by Jackson Huang and Bri Watson
- Implementing Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) in the Catalog: A Case of Library Connection (LCI) Libraries, presented by Judy Njoroge
- Sex Negativity & Anti-Queerness in Library of Congress Classification: History, Structure, & Systems presented by Rhonda Kauffman, Tiffany Henry, Anastasia Chiu
- “Whose Authority? Applying a DEI Lens to Traditional Descriptive Practice,” presented by Laura Daniels, Jackie Magagnosc, Liz Parker
- Did Libraries ‘Change the Subject’? What Happened, What Didn’t, & What’s Ahead presented by Jill Baron, Violet Fox, Tina Gross
- New article: Library of Congress Subject Headings: A Post-Coordinated Future by Nancy Cooey and Amy Phillips in Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, discussing how complex precoordinated headings hinder linked data & DEI efforts.
- New blog post: Indigenous science book display in UM Libraries, describing an exhibit put together by University of Manitoba Library workers Shirley Delorme Russell and Justin Fuhr. The post describes the difficulties in finding appropriate resources through the library’s catalog.
I’m doing a brief review of the new LCSH lists for headings that might be of interest to readers of Critcatenate. FYI, LCSH list numbers consist of a two-digit number for the year and a two-digit number for the month the headings were approved (for example, headings on list 2301 were approved in January 2023).
New LC headings of note on list 2301:
- New LCSH: Capitol Hill Organized Protest, Seattle, Wash., 2020
- New LCSH: Chatbots
- New LCSH: Post COVID-19 condition (Disease) [with a Use For for Long COVID (Disease)]
New LC headings of note on expedited list 2302:
- Lots of headings have now been given the macron over Māori (for example, Architecture, Maori is now Architecture, Māori)
Of note in LC decisions: LC received multiple proposals to add new subject headings and class numbers for specific Indigenous groups, but those proposals were rejected because no evidence of consultation with members of those groups was shown. See LC’s Summary of Decisions 2302.
Upcoming:
- Wednesday May 10: Public Forum for RBMS CVRMC Prejudicial Works Terminology, hosted by the Prejudicial Materials Working Group of RBMS’s Controlled Vocabularies Editorial Group, focusing on the 50 proposed genre/form headings to be used for indexing works that are prejudicial in nature or related to systems of oppression.
- Tuesday May 16-Friday May 19: Medical Library Association/Special Libraries Association joint conference. The full schedule isn’t available yet, but please attended these two critcat-related sessions:
- “Collaborative Approaches to Improving MeSH,” lightning talk by Violet Fox and Kelleen Maluski
- “Subjected: Investigating the Impact of MeSH Terms on Underrepresented Groups,” group presentation
- Wednesday May 17-Friday May 19: Critical Pedagogy Symposium online event. Critcat-related sessions include:
- Is Metadata Also Ignorance? Agnotology, Race, and Description by Jose Guerrero
- Wednesday May 24-Thursday May 25: Critical Approaches to Libraries Conference, an online conference organized by librarians in the UK. Critcat-related sessions include:
- “Using the Homosaurus in a public library consortium: a case study” presented by Rachel Fischer
- “At the intersection: IFLA LRM, Queer Theory, and Marxism for conceptualising gender variance in the bibliographic universe” presented by Kris Massengale
- “Collaborative cataloguing ethics: a code for all seasons” presented by Jane Daniels, Karen Snow, Beth Shoemaker, Diane Pennington, May Chan & Sarah Furger
- Thursday July 20: 2023 Metadata Justice in Oklahoma Libraries & Archives Symposium, an online all-day event. The keynote speaker will be Suzette Chang of nonprofit organization Thick Descriptions
Please get in touch if I’ve missed anything relevant, I’d be happy to add it to next month’s report!