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 December 2024:
- New research survey: Premised on Care: Redescription as Restorative Justice in American Archives from Tonia Sutherland at UCLA. The study focuses on redescription and descriptive remediation practices in US archival repositories
- New special issue: volume 51 issue 7 of Knowledge Organization (KO) has the theme Critical and Social Knowledge Organization. Articles include:
- Social Dimensions of Culture, Code-Switching, and Controlled Vocabularies by Heather Moulaison-Sandy, Karen Snow, Brian Dobreski
- Developing Person-Centered Metadata: A Case Study of The Behaviours in Dementia Toolkit by Nick Ubels, Lisabelle Tan, Lauren Albrecht, Angel Long
- Toward an Etiology of Harm for Knowledge Organization: Onto-Epistemic Injustice in Classificatory Systems of Record by Beth Patin, Tyler Youngman, Elliott Hauser
- Information and Code Biases: Social Differentiation, Intersectionality and Decoloniality in Knowledge Organization Systems by Maria Aparecida Moura
- Critical Control: How Different Forms of Vocabulary Control Aid and Hinder Novice Indexers Aiming to Support Racial and Social Justice by Chris Holstrom
- Psychiatric Classifications in The Light Of Bibliographic Classifications: An Epistemic Justice Issue by Laurence Favier, Stéphanie Derdar
- New scholarly article: “Our Precious Heritage”: Catholic Subject Headings and the Assertion of Worldview through Cataloging by Deirdre Sullivan, published in Cataloging & Classification Quarterly
- New scholarly article: Bringing Order to Chaos Ethically: “Cataloging Code of Ethics” and Critical Cataloging by Dalila Mirović, published in Bosniaca, providing a perspective from Bosnia and Herzegovina
- New scholarly article: Improving and Expanding Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) During Times of Social Change: The Hispanic/Latinx Inclusive Terminologies Project by Aidy Weeks, Stephanie Fell, and Katie Hoskins, published in The International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion
- New magazine article: Words Matter: Creating a Harmful-Content Statement to Build an Inclusive Catalog by Rachel Newlin and Aaron Bock, published in American Libraries
- New post: Libraries as the New Frontlines of Knowledge: Engaging with Indigenous Knowledge Systems, part 4 of a 15 part series on Decolonizing my Library, by Edgardo Civallero
- New blog post: Undertaking a Reparative Language Project at Haverford College by Mary Crauderueff, sharing work done on revising finding aids at the Haverford College Quaker & Special Collections in Pennsylvania, published on the SAA Descriptive Notes blog
- New blog post: Revising the Record: The Evolution of Describing Boarding School Collections, discussing work done by the Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections department at Washington State University Libraries
- New podcast episode: episode 140 of librarypunk is titled Metadata Related to Indigenous Peoples of the Americas feat. Katherine and Brandon, featuring a discussion of the work being done by the PCC Task Group for Metadata Related to Indigenous Peoples of the Americas
- New webinar recordings: NIKLA (National Indigenous Knowledge and Language Alliance)’s series from the Respectful Terminology Platform Project:
- Subject-Headings Describing Indigenous Peoples in the RVM: a Tailor-Made Methodology presented by Susanne Brillant
- Community-Building Through International Collaboration on Multilingual LOD Vocabulary: Nomenclature for Museum Cataloging, presented by Nathalie Guénette and Trang Dang of the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN)
- Learning from Indigenous Voices presented by Sadie Anderson, providing an overview of the Saskatchewan Indigenous Subject Headings Project of the Provincial Library and Literary Office of Saskatchewan
- Using Linked Data to Improve LGBTQ+ Description presented by Bri Watson and K.J. Rawson, discussing the Homosaurus
- Revising Legacy Vocabulary: Interim Updates to Indigenous Related Terminology in the Canadiana Collections presented by Jason Friedman and Natalie MacDonald
- New intern posting: Inclusive Cataloging Graduate Internship at Emory University, “a paid graduate internship in inclusive resource description focused on subject analysis of LGBTQ+ materials and the application of LGBTQ+ terminology to improve description and discoverability of LGBTQ+ library resources.” [editor’s note: looking forward to seeing more of these paid opportunities!]
- New MeSH update: the yearly update of MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) is now available: see the Use of 2025 MeSH in Cataloging for an overview of updates and What’s New in MeSH for a list of new subject headings
- New LCSH policy: An instruction sheet has been created to clarify policy regarding offensive words in subject headings: H 1922 Offensive Words. LC’s PTCP (Policy, Training, and Cooperative Programs Division) writes: “The new policy will be presented and discussed at the Quarterly LCSH/LCC Editorial meeting on January 17, 2025. PTCP has not yet had an opportunity to review the word lists in other languages that currently exist in LCSH. We welcome any proposals from those with the requisite language knowledge to cancel existing subject headings in languages other than English. Clean up in Library of Congress Classification captions for the English terms is under way and will also follow any cancellation proposal for terms in languages other than English.”
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 2408 were approved in August 2024).
New LC headings of note on list 2408:
- revised LCSH: from COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020- to COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020-2023
- new LCSH: Día de la Raza
- new LCSH: Eating habits
- revised LCSH: from Egúngún (Cult) to Egúngún [along with multiple other headings formerly qualified with the word “cult”]
- new LCSH: Gender neutral parenting
- new LCSH: Historically Black Greek letter societies
- new LCSH: Israeli essays, with the scope note “Here are entered collections of essays originating in Israel in Hebrew or in several languages collectively. Such collections in Arabic are entered under Arabic essays–Israel; in Yiddish under Yiddish essays–Israel. Collections of such essays in other individual languages are entered under Israeli essays ([name of language]).”
- New LCSH: Palestine question (To 1948) in literature
- New LCSH: Seed banks
- New LCSH: Social media and youth
- New LCSH: Swifties (Music fans)
Please let me know if there’s anything else coming up or I’ve missed anything!