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 2025:
- new vocabulary: San Francisco Public Library has created a list of alternative headings. The list contains almost 900 terms, many relating to Indigenous peoples, providing alternatives to the current LCSH.
- new grant announcement: $3.2M Mellon grant boosts Native Hawaiian knowledge at UH Mānoa Library, published in the University of Hawaiʻi News. The Kahoʻiwai: Reclaiming Hawaiian Knowledge Sovereignty initiative includes developing a Hawaiian Knowledge Organization System (HKOS) and a Hawaiian language newspaper index
- New post: Redefining Cataloging Standards for a Diverse World, part 8 of a 15-part series on Decolonizing my Library, by Edgardo Civallero
- New scholarly article: How Do LGBTQ+ Library Catalog Users Talk About Subject Searching? by Heather Moulaison-Sandy, Brian Dobreski, Karen Snow, published in the Journal of Documentation
- New special issue: volume 51 issue 8 of Knowledge Organization (KO) is part II with the theme Critical and Social Knowledge Organization. Articles include:
- Sort of People: Considerations About the Ontogeny of Autism in the Dewey Decimal System, 1942–2023 / Dóra Pákozdi
- Native Peoples and Knowledge Organization: Perspective from the Indigenous Subject Representation to Promote Latin American Approaches / Mario Barité, Mirtha Rauch
- Organization and Representation of Indigenous Scientific Production: A Case Study on the Institutional Repository in Brazil / Caroline Periotto, Felipe Arakaki, Jair de Jesus Massa, Luzia Sigoli Fernandes Costa, Luciana de Souza Gracioso
- Provocations of Process in Critical Knowledge Organization Work / Julia Bullard
- Knowledge Organization Systems Classifying Crimes of Violence Against Women, Homicide of Women and Feminicide: A Proposal / Rochelle Martins Alvorcem, Gercina Ângela de Lima, Maria Cristina Vieira de Freitas
- Drag Storytimes and Bibliographic Invisibility: A Comparative Analysis of Picture Book Subject Metadata / Sarah Barriage, Beth Stri
Critcat readers may be interested in learning about the new monthly Catapod podcast, featuring host William Blueher interviewing art library catalogers. The newest episode is an interview with Elizabeth (Liz) O’Keefe, retired from the Morgan Library, discussing her work with ARLIS/NA (Art Libraries Society of North America).
LC shenanigans alert: On Tuesday February 18, the Library of Congress sent an email announcement about a new list of LCSH revisions called list 2412a. This list contained 45 proposed revisions to LCSH relating to Trump’s executive orders to change “Gulf of Mexico” to “Gulf of America” and “Mount Denali” back to “Mount McKinley.” Although the list was backdated to February 13, 2025, no one was notified of its proposals until the morning of February 18th, and the deadline for submitting comments was the same day, February 18th. Usually LC provides 3 weeks of commenting time by the public, so this was an extraordinary move on LC’s part, not allowing much comment from the public (especially international colleagues).
The next morning, Wednesday February 19th, the PCC email list received an email from the LC Policy, Training & Cooperative Programs Division chief, Judith Cannan, saying, in full: “PTCP acknowledges the communications that the Library has received in response to tentative monthly list 12 LCSH 2 (list 2412a). The Library of Congress defers to the United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN) for place names contained within our controlled vocabularies and classification. For more information, please see our Subject Headings Manual sheet H 690 Formulating Geographic Headings and visit the BGN webpage.”
In other words, the changes to the LCSH Mexico, Gulf of and Denali, Mount (Alaska) will be going ahead, despite the many responses received opposing the revision. An upsetting change of procedure and a disappointing precedent for LC to set! If your library or consortium would like to implement local alternatives, now’s a great time to make those decisions. Possible alternatives would be to continue using the old LCSH locally, or using the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (Denali; Mexico, Gulf of).
National Archives shenanigans alert: the Appendix of Reparative Description Preferred Terms has been removed from the National Archives Lifecycle Data Requirements Guide. The appendix has been archived at the Wayback Machine.
Upcoming:
- Monday March 3rd–Friday March 7th: ALA Core Interest Group Week, featuring 30 free virtual hour-long programs. Critcat-related sessions include:
- Cataloging and Classification Research Interest Group, featuring “The Ethics Evolution: Catalogers’ Perspectives Over Time” by Karen Snow and Elizabeth Shoemaker, and “Exploring Systemic Gender Bias in Library of Congress Subject Headings: A Comprehensive Study” by Sungmin Park and Yuji Tosaka
- Faceted Subject Access Interest Group, featuring “Faceted Subject Vocabularies Increase Representation of Marginalized Communities in Biomedical Research” by Mego Franks
- Cataloging Norms Interest Group, featuring “Cataloging for Accessibility: An Inclusive Approach to Yiddish-language Collection Description” by Michelle Sigiel
- Tuesday March 4th: Repairing and Restoring Cultural Memory: The Library of Congress’s Ancestral Voices Initiative a Decade Later, part of Inclusive Collections, Inclusive Libraries, a RLUK (Research Libraries UK) virtual program. “Guha Shankar surveys an initiative of the US national library to collaborate with a Native American community and developers of cutting-edge digital technology to address critical issues in cultural representation, co-curation, intellectual access, knowledge repatriation and preservation”
- Monday March 10–Wednesday March 12: Code4Lib 2025. Critcat-relevant sessions include:
- Thursday March 27–Thursday May 22: free webinar series titled Engaging with Critical Cataloging Past and Present, presented by Minitex. Sessions include:
- Library of Congress Subject Heading Authority Work with Elissah Becknell
- Voices of the Catalog: A Digital and Oral History of Hennepin County Catalogers with Amy Gabbert-Montag, Jaylene Telford, and Charlotte Kadifa
- Working Together to Improve Disability and Medical Subject Headings with Violet Fox
- Critical Cataloging and the American Library Association Subject Analysis Committee with Tina Gross
- Reviving the Hennepin County Authority File with David Lesniaski
- Tuesday April 1: Symposium on Reparative Description in Library Catalogs, hosted in person by the Michigan State University Libraries. The day-long event will include a keynote by Blaire Morseau, 1855 Professor of Great Lakes Anishinaabe Knowledge, Spiritualities, and Cultural Practices, and a presentation by Melissa Isaac and Anne Heidemann of the Saginaw Chippewa Tribal Libraries
- Thursday April 10th: Jumpstart Inclusive Cataloging, a half-day online course hosted by Library Journal and School Library Journal
- Monday June 23: As part of SEI, the Summer Educational Institute, Treshani Perera will be presenting on Inclusive Description and Subjects for Cultural Heritage Materials
Please let me know if there’s anything else coming up or I’ve missed anything!