Author: Violet

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Critcatenate: #critcat in May 2025

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 May 2025:

The AI-whatever corner:

National Archives shenanigans alert: NARA’s Statement on Potentially Harmful Content was removed from the National Archives webpage in February 2025. The page has been archived at the Wayback Machine.

upcoming:

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Critcatenate: #critcat in April 2025

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 April 2025:

  • new call for proposals: Metadata Justice in Oklahoma Libraries & Archives Symposium 2025. The University of Central Oklahoma is looking for proposals for discussion sessions, group writing sessions, lightning talks, or other presentation formats for their annual virtual symposium. Proposals will be accepted through June 15th; preference will be given to proposals accepted by June 1st. Topics of particular interest include:
    • Obstacles you are facing due to the recent executive orders on IMLS or NEH
    • Efforts your library is making in light of recent obstacles
    • Reparative description
    • Alternative or homegrown vocabularies
    • Providing description for audiovisual, oral histories, and/or other non-traditional formats
    • Staff training for inclusive metadata projects
  • new blog post: last month I missed this reflection on the LCSH revisions to “Gulf of America” etc. from the Australian perspective: The gulf of America from Hugh Rundle
  • new blog post: On Fooling Around With Triples by Jez Cope. Investigating the question “Is the linked data published by the Library of Congress being materially changed as a result of the aforementioned flurry of executive orders?”
  • new chapter: Metadata as White Ignorance by Jose C. Guerrero, published in Critical Race Theory in LIS: Challenging White Supremacy in Libraries. “This chapter challenges a commonplace understanding of metadata as a step toward knowledge – if not knowledge itself – by invoking Charles W. Mills’ (1997) concept of white ignorance to argue that metadata readily lend themselves to deliberate, constructed forms of not-knowing invested in white racial domination.”
  • new chapter: Bias in the System: A Case for Catalogers’ Judgment by Annisija W. Hunter, published in Critical Race Theory in LIS: Challenging White Supremacy in Libraries. “If taught and trained with principles of CRT and convinced of the power of their catalogers’ judgment, catalogers can do anti-racist work by dismantling the bias in the system and making knowledge organization systems more equitably organized and accessible.”
  • new scholarly article: Social Changes and Local History: The Challenges of Creating Discoverable Open Source Institutional Theses and Dissertations by Boutsaba Janetvilay, published in Libraries Bridging Boundaries: Challenges & Strategies for Global Openness. Describes a project to identify missing LCSH relating to people in the Central Valley of California
  • new scholarly article: Reimagining Archives in the Age of Automation: A Decolonial and Relational Approach by Kara Long, Cana Uluak Itchuaqiyaq, Chris A. Lindgren, Andi Ogier, Lucy Aviññaq Boyd, Dylan Paisaq Itchuaqiyaq & Erin Yunes, published in Technical Communication Quarterly. Introduces the Relational Approach to Archiving (RAA) as a vital framework emphasizing the active involvement of communities in the archival process, and ensuring that their cultural knowledge and values guide how materials are preserved and described
  • new award announcement: Cyrus Ford is the winner of the University of Nevada Las Vegas Libraries’ Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award. Ford was nominated for his significant inclusive cataloging work, including work through the Middle East Librarians Association (MELA) Committee on Cataloging (ConC) and the MELA LCSH Working Group on proposals to create more neutral and precise terms that better reflect both historical and contemporary discussions on the issue of Palestine
  • new award announcement: Sandy Berman has been awarded the 2025 Herb Biblo Outstanding Leadership Award for Social Justice & Equality for for outstanding leadership in promoting social justice and/or equality within the library profession
  • new digital exhibit: Voices of the Catalog: An Introduction to the History of Hennepin County Catalogers, 1973-1999. Created by St Kate’s MLIS students Amy Gabbert-Montag, Charlotte Kadifa, and Jaylene Telford, highlighting the inclusive cataloging practices of Sandy Berman and the Hennepin County Library’s cataloging team
  • new recording: Reparative Description: What Is It and How Can I Use It? by ALIAVic (the Victoria chapter of the Australian Library and Information Association). Includes information about many resources relating to First Nations collections
  • new recording: PCC At Large Virtual Conference April 2025. Critcat sessions include:
    • South Asia SACO Funnel presented by Paromita Biswas & Lana Soglasnova
    • PCC SCS Task Group on Privacy in Name Authority Records presented by Ben Abrahamse
    • Derussification and Reparative Cataloging of Music from the Margins of the Soviet Union presented by Laikin Dantchenko & Jack Haig Nighan

AI Whatever:

Upcoming:

Please let me know if there’s anything else coming up or I’ve missed anything!

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Critcatenate: #critcat in March 2025

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 March 2025:

cover of the book Ways of Knowing: Oral Histories on the Worlds Words Create edited by Amanda Belantara and Emily Drabinski.

Scan of a letter from Sandy Berman to The Policy, Training, and Cooperative Programs Division of the Library of Congress. It reads: 3-22-25 Policy, Training, and Cooperative Programs Division Library of Congress Washington, DC 20540-4305 Dear Colleagues, BRAVO! Your recent conversion of DENALI, MOUNT (ALASKA) and MEXICO, GULF OF to MCKINLEY, MOUNT (ALASKA) and AMERICA, GULF OF, respectively, as both primary and subheadings was breathtakingly thorough and detailed. You are masters of your craft. Alas, you are also willful handmaidens of chauvinism, ethnocentrism and fascism. Also: Trumpism. Many weeks ago I expressed the hope that LC would resist the temptation to implement this palpably capricious, arbitrary, and baseless name-charging. That admonition appears to have gone unheeded. Our President has no authority to wantonly replace the name for international waters that abut more countries than our own. Beyond that, the Gulf of Mexico has been so known since about the 16th Century. Its renaming, totally rejected by neighboring Mexico, smacks of arrogant linguistic imperialism. It seems the whole state of Alaska prefers the Athabascan place- name, Denali, to McKinley, a U.S. President associated with American expansion who never set foot in Alaska. The widely-unwanted name change is an affront to Alaska's indigenous population, as well as its state legislature and two Republican senators. Although LC has now fully demonstrated its lock-step deference to bigoted, unjustified authority, I hope American librarians will muster the moral and intellectual strength. to ignore its dismal example. Sorrowfully, [large, sprawling, angry signature] Sanford Berman Margaret Mann Citation Recipient Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award Recipient ALA Equality Award Recipient Herb Biblo Outstanding Leadership Award for Social Justice & Equality Recipient

  • new webinar recordings available: ALA Core Interest Group Week. 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
  • new call for board members: the Homosaurus board is restructuring and looking for new volunteers for the Homosaurus Collective. They encourage individuals passionate about LGBTQ+ representation, linked data, and/or ethical metadata practices to apply for membership. Application closes on Wednesday April 30th.
  • new call for committee members: SAC, ALA’s Subject Analysis Committee, is looking for members for three new working groups. Members do not need to be ALA members to participate. The new working groups are:
    • SAC Working Group on Scope Notes will identify LCSH headings that could benefit from scope notes. This will include gaining insights from the cataloging community on headings that they find particularly confusing or see often misapplied. The group will then draft scope notes for some of these headings in accordance with LC procedures, and submit them, with an eye to finding a clear workflow for headings that could benefit from scope notes. To join or ask questions, contact the chair: Margaret Joyce (mjoyce4@hawaii.edu)
    • SAC Working Group Opposing the Removal of $v (Form Subdivisions) from Subject Headings in “Modern MARC” will promote awareness of the Library of Congress policy to not include $v (form subdivisions) in subject headings as part of “modern MARC“; and will advocate for a reversal of that policy and retention of $v. Particular attention will be paid to investigating the effects of this change for non-academic libraries, articulating the usefulness of $v for users, and highlighting the negative impacts of the loss of this subfield. To join or ask questions, contact the chair: Deborah Tomaras (Deborah.Tomaras@marist.edu)
    • SAC Working Group on Local Authorities will work to ensure that the broader library community (with particular attention to non-academic libraries) is aware of changes to LCSH, and providing information on how to change display names and/or create local records. This group was formed in response to the recent LCSH revisions to Gulf of Mexico and Mount Denali. To join or ask questions, contact the chairs: Allison Bailund (abailund@sdsu.edu) and Rebecca Saunders (rlsaunders@email.wcu.edu)
  • new journal issue: issue 210 of Catalogue & Index is focused on the themes of equality, diversity, and inclusion within metadata work. The contents include:
    • Cataloguing the Empire : Classification as Colonial Project / Gabriella P. Reyes
    • Cataloguing Buddhist Literature in English: Ethical Issues in an Assay / Lambert Tuffrey
    • Problematic Subject Headings: Making Our Catalogue More Equitable, Diverse and Inclusive at the University of Bristol / Liz Cooper and Damien McManus
    • Forming an Anti-Racist and Inclusive Library Catalogue at Cardiff University / Mouse Miller, Karen F. Pierce and Vicky Stallard
    • The Technical Side to Forming an Anti-Racist and Inclusive Library Catalogue at Cardiff University / Vicky Stallard, Karen F. Pierce and Mouse Miller [describing specific ways to display preferred terms in Alma]
    • Changing the Subject: The Homosaurus in Emory University’s Library Catalogue / Tara Kunesh and Jude Romines
    • Updating Subject Headings for Children’s Literature at the University of Strathclyde: the Children’s Theme Index / Andrew McAinsh
    • Narrowing the Diversity Gap: LGBTQ+ Zines, Metadata and Discovery at the University for the Creative Arts / Emma Hallett
    • The Cataloguing Code of Ethics Since 2021: What Next for Your Code? / Jane Daniels
  • new recording: Critical Cataloging for Libraries, presented by Rhiannon Williams for The Library Corporation, including information about how to add local headings in TLC products such as Library•Solution
  • new recording: Library of Congress Subject Heading Authority Work presented by Elissah Becknell, the first part of the free webinar series titled Engaging with Critical Cataloging Past and Present hosted by Minitex

LC shenanigans follow-up from last month: The changes to the LCSH Mexico, Gulf of and Denali, Mount (Alaska) were implemented in mid-March, despite the many responses received opposing the revision.  If your library or consortium would like to implement local alternatives, possible alternatives would be to continue using the old LCSH locally, or using the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (Denali; Mexico, Gulf of).

Upcoming:

Please let me know if there’s anything else coming up or I’ve missed anything!

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Critcatenate: #critcat in February 2025

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:

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!

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Critcatenate: #critcat in January 2025

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 January 2025:

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 2409 were approved in September 2024).

New LC headings of note on list 2409:

  • new LCSH: Civilization–Israeli influences
  • new LCSH: Covenant marriage
  • new LCSH: Cultural rights
  • revised LCSH: from Elgin marbles to Parthenon sculptures
  • new LCSH: Erotic massage
  • new LCSH: Israelization
  • new LCSH: Political violence in popular culture
  • new LCSH: Positionality (Sociology)
  • new LCSH: Racial gerrymandering
  • new LCSH: Right-wing extremists in popular culture
  • new LCSH: Transgender prostitutes

Note:  LC announced at their January 2025 quarterly editorial meeting that they would reject the proposal to revise the subject heading to Gender critical feminism. The LCSH will remain Trans-exclusionary radical feminism. LC received over 300 emails/comments about this proposal.

Upcoming:

  • Tuesday February 4th: “This Work is Urgent, This Work will Take Time”: Integrating DEIA into Resource Description Workflows, webinar hosted by NASIG, presented by Jennifer Browning and Kevin Burke at Carleton University Library
  • Thursday February 6th: Machine Learning Approaches to Gender Bias in Archival Curation, part of Inclusive Collections, Inclusive Libraries, a RLUK (Research Libraries UK) virtual program. “Lucy Havens will report on research combining Machine Learning (ML) and human-centered research methods to identify gender biased language in archival catalogue metadata descriptions.”
  • Friday February 7th: Library Association of the City University of New York hosts a LACUNY Cataloging Roundtable focused on “Metadata and Inclusion.” “The prompt for this roundtable is that each participant will deliver an informal, 5-10 minute presentation on one way in which metadata practices could be more inclusive. If you would like to participate, just email mdineiro@ccny.cuny.edu  and pmcgowan@bmcc.cuny.edu with your presentation topic.”
  • Wednesday February 12th: virtual OCLC Cataloging Community Meeting, featuring Bri Watson and Chloe Misorski discussing the Best Practices for Queer Metadata
  • 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”
  • Thursday April 10th: Jumpstart Inclusive Cataloging, a half-day online course hosted by Library Journal and School Library Journal

Please let me know if there’s anything else coming up or I’ve missed anything!

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Critcatenate: #critcat in December 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 December 2024:

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!

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Critcatenate: #critcat in November 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 November 2024:

It’s not specifically cataloging-related, but Critcatenate readers might be interested in reading my new zine, A Librarian Against AI; or, I Think AI Should Leave.

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 2407 were approved in July 2024).

New LC headings of note on list 2407:

  • new LCSH: Anti-intellectualism
  • new LCSH: Anti-war posters
  • new LCSH: Close reading (Literary analysis)
  • new LCSH: Gender-based violence in art 
  • new LCSH: Prison gerrymandering

Two other interesting revisions on list 2407:

  • For the established LCSH Sexual minorities, a new Use For has been added for Queer people
  • A new LCSH has been added: English language–Slurs, which replaces several LCSH which were cancelled this month. Unusually, references have not been added, so there are no “Use for” on the new heading. The scope note reads “Here are entered general works on slurs in the English language as well as works on individual English-language slurs.” The cancelled LCSH are:
    • Gook (The English word)
    • Homo (The English word)
    • Shyster (The English word)
    • Slut (The English word)
    • Spade (The English word) 

Looking through the Summary of Decisions for list 2407, there’s multiple critcat-relevant proposals which were not approved, such as Hapa (Ethnic identity) and Slave rebellions in motion pictures. There was also a proposal to delete the heading Asperger’s syndrome, and instead use Autism spectrum disorder; this proposal was rejected, but changes to the Asperger’s syndrome headings will be announced in coming months.

Note the tentative list 2412 has a proposal to change the LCSH Trans-exclusionary radical feminism to Gender-critical feminism. If you have thoughts on that, consider emailing LC with thoughtful, constructive feedback by the deadline of December 17th at the address at the top of the page.

Upcoming:

Please let me know if there’s anything else coming up or I’ve missed anything!

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Critcatenate: #critcat in October 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 October 2024:

Upcoming:

Please let me know if there’s anything else coming up or I’ve missed anything!

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Critcatenate: #critcat in September 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 September 2024:

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 2406 were approved in June 2024).

New LC headings of note on list 2406:

  • new LCSH: Collective trauma
  • new LCSH: Gender identity in video games
  • new LCSH: Generational trauma
  • new LCSH: Pregnant men 

Many new LCSH relating to Palestine and Israel, including:

  • new LCSH: Blockade–Gaza Strip
  • new LCSH: Gaza Strip–History–Blockade, 2007- 
  • new LCSH: Gaza Strip–History–Bombardment, 2023- 
  • new LCSH: Israel–History–Bombardment, 2001- 
  • new LCSH: Israel-Hamas War, 2023-
  • new LCSH: October 7 Hamas Attack, Israel, 2023
  • new LCSH: Palestinian Arab diaspora

Multiple revisions relating to paralysis:

  • revised LCSH: from Hemiplegics to People with hemiplegia
  • revised LCSH: from Paralytics to People with paralysis
  • revised LCSH: from Paraplegics to People with paraplegia
  • revised LCSH: from Quadriplegics to People with quadriplegia

Take note of special list 2406a, which has many revisions relating to race, including revising Racially mixed people to Multiracial people and revising Miscegenation to Miscegenation (Racist theory). Congratulations and thank you to the African American SACO Funnel for this work!

Upcoming:

Please let me know if there’s anything else coming up or I’ve missed anything!

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Critcatenate: #critcat in August 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 August 2024:

I’m putting things about generative AI in their own section, because it bums me out that you’re all blithely moving forward with using these planet-killing hallucination machines that disregard intellectual property and populate bullshit based on the bigotries of the past.

The psychic-damage-by-AI section:

Upcoming:

Please let me know if there’s anything else coming up or I’ve missed anything!