Posted on by Violet

Critcatenate: #critcat in February 2024

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 practice, standards, and infrastructure.

#critcat in February 2024:

  • New survey: Survey on Cataloging Ethics from Karen Snow and Elizabeth Shoemaker. They write: Please help us with our study of cataloging ethics! If your official job duties include cataloging and you would like to share your thoughts on what you think are important ethical issues catalogers face, please complete our questionnaire, even if you completed our initial questionnaire in 2019. It should only take 10-15 minutes, depending on the depth of your answers. No identifying information will be collected. Deadline: March 8, 2024.
  • New call for participation: consider joining the Cultural Assessment Working Group, a part of the DLF AIG (Digital Library Federation Assessment Interest Group). The Cultural Assessment Working Group is designed to raise awareness of cultural bias and strive for diversity, equity and inclusivity in digital collection practice. The group aims to publish their Inclusive Metadata Toolkit in 2024. They’re especially looking for participants who can contribute to the toolkit sections about advocacy, assessment, and implementation case studies. Learn more at the Cultural Assessment Working Group wiki page and consider joining the Cultural Assessment Working Group discussion list/Google Group for announcements and to share your interest.
  • New statement and call to action: The Inclusive Terminology Glossary’s Inclusion of Palestine: A Statement by Carissa Chew. Last month I shared how the Collections Trust in the UK dropped a link to the Inclusive Terminology Glossary because of political pushback. If you haven’t yet, please consider emailing the Collections Trust to request that their rash decision to remove the link to this valuable resource be reversed; here’s an example of what you might write.
  • New call for papers: Knowledge Organization (KO) Special Issue: Critical and Social Knowledge Organization. “We invite authors to submit an abstract for consideration for this special issue. Potential topics: knowledge organization support for social justice; truth and relevance in knowledge organization; inclusive terminology; Antiracism, anticolonialism and feminist stances; Indigenous knowledge organization; ethics in knowledge organization; epistemicide and epistemic (in)justice in knowledge organization systems. Please send a 500-700 word abstract with author name(s), affiliation, email address and name of the corresponding author to: suellenmilani@id.uff.br, widad.mustafa@univ-lille.fr and nataliatognoli@id.uff.br. Deadline for abstracts: April 1.
  • New call for participants: the new Occult SACO and NACO funnels are now forming to address subjects relating to the occult, spiritualism, new religious movements, and contemporary paganism. Contact occultfunnels@gmail.com to participate in this work.
  • New article: Cultus, Cult, and Cults: Suggestions for Revising Problematic Library of Congress Subject Headings by Jamie Carlstone and Ermine L. Algaier IV, published in TCB: Technical Services in Religion & Theology
  • New article: Prejudice But No Pride: The Portuguese Universal Decimal Classification’s Labelling of Sexual Orientation by Paulo Vicente, Ana Lúcia Terra, and Maria Manuela Tavares de Matos Cardoso, published in the January 2024 issue of IFLA Journal
  • New article: Implementing the DDC Optional Arrangement for Religion at a Public Library: A Case Study by Lisa Thornton, published in Cataloging & Classification Quarterly
  • New article: Inclusive Description in the Glasgow School of Art Library’s Published Catalog by Carissa Chew, published in Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals
  • New article: Forming and Sustaining a Community of Practice for Volunteer-Based EDI Work by Ramona Caponegro, Suzan Alteri, Krista Aronson, Lisely Laboy and Andrea Jamison, published in In the Library with the Lead Pipe. Discusses the Diverse BookFinder, a resource which provides consistent metadata for children’s picture books featuring Black and Indigenous people and People of Color (BIPOC), showing how BIPOC characters are described and what message the books send.
  • New paper: Arbiters of Ugliness: A Review of Strategies for Describing Offensive Archival Materials by Leah Minadeo, a student at Wayne State University
  • Recently updated: Guidelines for Inclusive and Conscientious Description; written by Charlotte Lellman with input and collaborative support from Hanna Clutterbuck-Cook, Amber LaFountain, and Jessica Sedgwick; published by Harvard’s Center for the History of Medicine. Focused on describing medical resources and including a decision tree when encountering harmful or outdated terminology.
  • New book now available for preorder: Inclusive Cataloging: Histories, Context, and Reparative Approaches, edited by Amber Billey, Elizabeth Nelson, Rebecca Uhl
  • New book now available for order: Ethics in Linked Data, edited by Alexandra Provo, Kathleen Burlingame, and B.M. Watson, published by Library Juice Press
  • New resource: PCC FAQ: Cataloging of Resources Generated Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) Software. Developed by the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) Committee on Standards advising catalogers how to treat works co-created by generative AI programs. The upshot: “Consider a named AI or generative computer program used to create a resource to be a related work, not as an agent, even when the resource being cataloged presents an AI or other computer program as a creator or contributor.”
  • New webinar recording: Unseen Labor Panel Discussion (video recording, slides) about the Fresno State cross-stitching and embroidery exhibition as a creative expression of cataloging and metadata, featuring Ann Kardos (University of Massachusetts-Amherst), Bobby Bothmann (Mankato State), Tina Marie Maes (Madison Public Library), and Julie Moore (Fresno State).
  • New webinar recording: February 2024 OCLC cataloging community meeting, including a DEI panel discussion featuring these topics:
    • Harmful Language in Transcribed Titles: A Case Study by Treshani Perera (University of Kentucky Libraries)
    • Prejudicial Materials Working Group of RBMS’s Controlled Vocabularies Editorial Group by Sarah Hoover (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
  • New exhibit: Decolonizing the Library Catalog at the University of Cincinnati;  curated by Susan Banoun, Mikaila Corday, and Olga Hart; designed by Francesca Voyten. The exhibit includes a one-page bibliography and will be on display through the end of March. Thank you to Nimisha Bhat for the photos and alt text!

Decolonizing the Catalog What are the catalog and subject headings? Subject headings are strings of words that are created and maintained by a group of authorities, such as the Library of Congress, to help users find library resources on a given topic. Headings are generally based on standard, contemporary American English language usage and are intended to reflect current literature. The purpose of the catalog is to ensure discoverability of materials. Subject headings include keywords that may not be present in the book title, or explicitly stated in its content. Centers whiteness (assumed “White American male”): Astronaut Women astronauts African American astronauts Indian astronauts Includes outdated terminology: Blacks — Black person Slave — Enslaved person Illegal alien — Undocumented immigrant Gays — Gay people Asian Flu — 1957-1958 influenza pandemic Invalids — People with disabilities Omits concepts related to the African American experience: Great migration Blackface Environmental racism Slave auctions Slave markets Jim Crow laws What is the problem with Subject Headings? Issues found within LCSH (library of congress subject headings)

Examples of Subject Heading Issues Issues within LCSH Alexander, Michelle - The New Jim Crow Issue: though it has a high number of subject headings, there’s an obvious one missing: Jim Crow laws, which doesn’t exist in LCSH Loewen, James - Sundown towns: a hidden dimension of American racism Issue: UC’s local record lacks the subject Sundown Towns even though it has been approved as an official subject heading Morrison, Toni - The Bluest Eye Issue: the subject headings for this seminal work of African American literature are limited to African Americans, girls, Ohio, and fiction. This is an extremely small number of headings, and some of the major themes of the book, including racism, discrimination, and poverty, aren’t addressed at all. Angelou, Maya - I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Issue: the given summary is “An African American woman recalls the anguish of her childhood in Arkansas and her adolescence in northern slums in the 1930s & 1940s.” We are able to infer from this summary that the protagonist encountered racism but it’s never stated, so it wouldn’t come up in a search for race or racism. Committee of American Library Association - List of Subject Headings for Use in Dictionary Catalogs cataloging guidelines reinforced racial science through physical attributions in Medical Library Catalogs. In 1901 “color of man” was shown as a subject heading. Under that heading, other subordinate terms were listed: “referred from complexion; ethnology; face, man; negroes; physiology; skin." The biological markers are included under this term and problematizes how librarians, particularly catalogers, classified and processed books and materials about Black people, and how they were identified through physical qualifiers.

Efforts to Decolonize the Catalog 1930s - Dorothy Porter, Catherine Latimer, and Francis Lydia Yocom developed local “unauthorized” subject headings for their respective institutions due to lack of inclusivity from LCSH. 1970s - Sanford (Sandy) Berman began the contemporary movement to modernize LCSH. He created an independent subject headings system at the Hennepin County Library in Minnesota improving upon LCSH with a responsive approach. His work moved to not only reform LCSH but also assert libraries' autonomy to move beyond its limitations. 1980s - Some problematic subject headings were eliminated or changed, including “Yellow peril". 1999 - The African American Subject Funnel Project was initially conceived as part of SACO (Subject Authority Cooperative Program) and works to create and update subject headings related to African American culture and history. The Funnel promotes the aims of the African American Studies Librarians Interest Group (AASLIG) which are to support research and services associated with identifying, preserving and spreading information on the study of African American life. They work with the Library of Congress Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) to provide input and guidance on terminology that accurately reflects the African American experience. 2020s - Long-criticized subject headings changed (removed "riots" to make “Tulsa Race Massacre"), glossaries and thesauri of inclusive language created and libraries started publishing statements on potentially harmful language. Terms such as Black Wall Streets and sundown towns are not new to those familiar with African-America, history and culture. These terms, however, did not exist in LCSH until funnel project members worked to develop these headings with help from insider perspectives and scholarly references. While we strive to acquire and make findable materials that are representative of our diverse community and the world. We recognize that materials with harmful, offensive and non-inclusive content may be included in our Library Catalog. If you encounter any harmful, offensive, or non-inclusive language in the library catalog, we welcome your feedback at [unreadable email address]

But wait there’s more! In which your Critcatenate editor catches up on the literature.

I’m doing a brief review of the new LCSH lists for headings that might be of interest to readers of Critcatenate. 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 2310 were approved in October 2023).

New LC headings of note on list 2310:

  • New LCSH: Adoptees–Identity
  • New LCSH: Transmisogyny

The 2310 Summary of Decisions includes rejections of proposals such as Authors, White; Ethnoculture; and Evil, Resistance to.

Upcoming:

  • Monday March 4 through Friday March 8: ALA Core Interest Group Week. Not much critcat-related this year, but this session caught my eye:
    • Friday March 8: Creative Ideas in Technical Services, including a presentation on “Homosaurus Usage in the OCLC Database: an Exploratory Analysis” by Paromita Biswas, Amanda Mack, and Erica Zhang
  • Thursday March 14-Saturday March 16: New England Archivists Spring 2024 Meeting includes sessions:
    • Balancing Acts: Case Studies of Reparative Description and Harmful Content Warnings
    • “Problematic Content Exists in Our Collections”: Harmful Content Statements
  • Friday April 5: 2024 New England Technical Services Librarians (NETSL) Spring Conference has a theme of “If It’s Broke, Let’s Fix It: Open Dialogue Between Problem and Opportunity.” Your Critcatenate editor will be presenting on the Cataloging Lab.
  • Thursday April 18: Inclusive Cataloging webinar from Tim Keller at Oberlin College, hosted by OhioNet
  • new course beginning April 21: Inclusive Description for Cultural Heritage Materials, presented by Treshani Perera and hosted by We Here

Please let me know if there’s anything else coming up!

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