Author: Violet

Hello all, Critcatenate is on a hiatus until I get a job offer. It’s tiresome to be told how valuable I’ve been to the profession while getting rejected from jobs left and right.

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.

N.B.: Your faithful Critcatenate editor was laid off from her cataloging job in July and is still out of work. 😩 Send job offers & good vibes her way!

#critcat in November 2025:

• New interview: ALA at 150: An Interview with (and by) Sanford Berman, interview by Jenna Freedman at the Lower East Side Librarian blog
• New surveys: The ALA Subject Analysis Committee’s Working Group on Local Headings seeks to survey libraries, archives, museums and associated institutions about their involvement in the work of revising subjects, genres, and other authority data in their local catalogs. This work might include changing, augmenting, or masking terms from controlled vocabularies such as Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), creating local headings, etc. They’ve got two surveys to assess both (1) needs for implementing local subject headings and (2) existing methods utilized for implementing local subjects; you can take one or both surveys.
  • Take the survey on local heading needs to share what support you think your institution would need to make changes to subjects, genres, and other authority data in the local catalog.
  • Take the survey on methods used for local headings to share what methods your institution uses or has used to make changes to subjects, genres, and other authority data in the local catalog.
• New survey: Ramification of DEI shifts in higher education on reparative cataloging activity: a research project to explore how recent political legislation and policy shifts within the U.S. regarding DEI (equity, diversity, & inclusion) in higher education are impacting DEI reparative metadata/cataloging efforts in academic libraries and archives in the U.S., Canada, or Mexico. The survey is intended to illuminate how the current political climate in the U.S. in 2025 impacts the efforts of reparative cataloging and metadata work in academic libraries. Survey conducted by Soojeong Herring, the Metadata Manager at Northeastern University, and Tiffany Henry, the Metadata & Institutional Repository Librarian at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.
• New blog post: The Most Dangerous AI Tool for Libraries Yet : How Class-Shelf Plus v3 quietly turns censorship into an automated workflow and why every librarian should be alarmed by Elissa Malespina. [Editor’s note: Unclear if this tool uses subject headings or classification to make decisions, but seems likely!]
• New post: a popular post on LinkedIn about the de-professionalisation of cataloging by Ann Spinney
• New conference poster: “I See Inclusive Description as the Practice That Slowly, Hopefully, Edges Out the Need for Reparative Description” : Exploring How Archival Practitioners Describe Queerness Within and Through Finding Aids by Travis Wagner and Evan Allgood, published in the ALISE 2025 proceedings
• New report: Reparative Description and Metadata Remediation Planning at the University of Michigan Deep Blue Institutional Repositories by Rachel Woodbrook and Alexandria Rayburn
• New video: Censorship and Reparative Description by MLIS student Sydney Hemp

Please let me know if there’s anything I’ve missed!

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.

N.B.: Your faithful Critcatenate editor was laid off from her cataloging job in July and is still out of work. 😩 Send job offers & good vibes her way!

#critcat in October 2025:

• new book: The House That Archives Built & Other Thoughts on Black Archival Possibilities by Dorothy Berry. Order the book and watch a book talk with the author.
• new academic article: Down Syndrome in the Archives: Addressing Archival Description of Legacy Records Documenting Disability Histories by Megan K. Friedel, published in The American Archivist
• new academic article: A Community of Belonging through Inclusive Metadata
  by Sharolyn Swenson, Katie Yeo, Jeremy Myntti, and Nicole Lewis, published in Theological Librarianship, describing work done by Brigham Young University librarians and their creation of an Inclusive Metadata Policy
• new academic article: Inequality and the Syndetic Structure of the Authority File : A Case of the “Lost Cause” Myth of the American Civil War in a Name Authority Record’s References by Mark Danley, published in the 2025 ALISE Proceedings
• new-ish academic article: Inching Forward in the Face of Hegemonic Factors: Examining Metadata Contradictions Across University Indigenous Collections
  Kaia MacLeod, Susan Dahl & Ingrid Reiche, published in the Journal of Library Metadata
• new-ish academic article: Mitigating Bias and Advocating for Data Sovereignty: The Role of Metadata and Paradata in Ethical AI-Driven Information Systems by Laís Barbudo Carrasco, published in the Journal of Library Metadata
• new blog post: Culturally Competent Description Action Campaign Updates by Amy Berish, Katie Martin, and Darren Young, describing work done at the Rockefeller Archive Center

the AI corner, I guess:

• new video: Don’t Erase, Inform! : the DE-BIAS Approach to Detecting and Contextualizing Harmful Language in Cultural Heritage Collections presented by Orfeas Menis Mastromichalakis. See also the article Don’t Erase, Inform! Detecting and Contextualizing Harmful Language in Cultural Heritage Collections and The DE-BIAS Vocabulary and Knowledge Graph
• new-ish academic article: Mind the Gap!: How Do we Ethically Bridge the Divide Between the Cataloging/Metadata Community and the World of AI? by Stephanie Sussmeier & Joshua A. Henry, published in the Journal of Library Metadata

upcoming:

• Tuesday November 4: ALA Core webinar: Exploring Descriptive Strategies for Outdated Language in Metadata and Cataloging, presented by Jessica L. Serrao and Tomeka Jackson
• Tuesday November 18: ALA Core Webinar: Retroactive Addition of Homosaurus: An Evaluation, presented by Brinna Michael and Sofia Slutskaya

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.

N.B.: Your faithful Critcatenate editor was laid off from her cataloging job in July and is now on the job market again. 😩 Send job offers & good vibes her way!

#critcat in July through September 2025:

• New scholarly article: Cataloging Ethics Definitions Revisited: Practitioner Perspectives Five Years Later by Karen Snow & Beth Shoemaker, published in Cataloging & Classification Quarterly
• New scholarly article: Typology of Creator Objections to Subject Cataloguing of Their Works by Julia Bullard, presented at North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization (NASKO)
• “Know the Difference”: A Comparison of Community-Led Erotic Knowledge Organization by Melissa Nelson and Bri Watson, presented at North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization (NASKO). Reviews of classification systems used on Archive of Our Own (AO3) and E-Hentai (EH)
• New scholarly article: Enhancing Inclusive Bibliographic Data: A Study of Disability Terminology in the Subject Headings of the National Library of Indonesia by Nadya Mentari, presented at IFLA WLIC 2025
• New scholarly article: Moving Threads: The Post-Custodial Archive Model Preserving Syrian Clothing Heritage by Monica Sklar, Katherine Hill McIntyre, and Isabella Tallman-Jones, published in The International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion
• New scholarly article: The Manuscript Heritage of the Western Islamic World between Critical Textual Analysis and Codicological Study: A Dialogue of Arab and Foreign Cataloging Methodologies and Transformations in Literary Discourse by Housny Hamra and Hesna Hamra, published in Science, Education and Innovations in the Context of Modern Problems
• New article: Communication and the Impact that CJK Cataloging Projects have had on the Users’ Side by Sharon Domier, published in the Japanese journal Information Science and Technology. Describes work being done by SACO Funnels and reparative cataloging examples
• New article: Adopting Critical Cataloging Practices Post Diversity Audit: Connecting the Community to Your Collection by Jessica K. Anderson and Yan Quan Liu, published in Library Resources & Technical Services
• New master’s thesis: Cataloging Culture: Critical Approaches for Museum Collections by Holly Young, describing critical cataloging work done at the Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture at the University of Washington, Indiana University’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (IUMAA), and Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology
• New master’s thesis: Metadata as Resistance: A Case Study on Language, Power, and the Cataloging of Palestinian Cultural Heritage by Katherine Knox Beler and Malin Färdig, using LCSH as a case study reflecting “key structural limitations in representing Palestinian identity, displacement, and political struggle, revealing how cataloging systems often reflect institutional and geopolitical biases”
• New book chapter: Bias in the System: A Case for Catalogers’ Judgment by Annisija W. Hunter, published in the book Critical Race Theory in LIS: Challenging White Supremacy in Libraries. Describes cataloging work informed by critical race theory principles.
• New recognition: ‘Mrs. His Name’ project wins award for University Libraries, SCUA. From the University of Nevada, Reno: “Elspeth Olson has received one of two awarded honorable mention prizes from the Journal of Western Archives for the Best General Interest Article Award for the period 2020-2024″ for the article Mrs. His Name: Reparative Description as a Tool for Cultural Sensitivity and Discoverability

New LC headings of note on list 2502c:

• new LCSH: Cultural humility
• new LCSH: Neurodivergent college students
• new LCSH: Sexism in sports

New LC headings of note on list 2503c:

• cancelled LCSH: Cults–Africa, West; Cults–Argentina; etc.
• new LCSH: Detroit Riot, Detroit, Mich., 1967
• revised LCSH: from Earth People (Cult) to Earth People
• new LCSH: Seven Provinces Mutiny, 1833
• revised LCSH: from Snake cults (Holiness churches) to Snake-handling churches (Holiness)
• new LCSH: Trauma-informed pedagogy
• revised LCSH: from Vandists (Cult) to Vandism
• new LCSH: Women, Black, in mass media

LC shenanigans alert:

• Several proposals were marked “The proposal is withdrawn and retained” without further information on the Summary of Decisions for list 2502c. That’s… confusing? The summary of decisions is meant to explain why specific proposals were rejected, and that brief note certainly doesn’t explain what’s happening.

upcoming:

• Thursday October 9: Arrangement & Description for Future Communities webinar and live discussion, part of the DHPSNY Dialogues series from Documentary Heritage and Preservation Services for New York

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

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 June 2025:

• call for volunteers: the Diverse BookFinder (DBF), an online, searchable database designed to facilitate the discoverability and exploration of books for children and youth featuring BIPOC characters, is looking for volunteers to join their Metadata Community of Practice. If you’re interested in reading picture books, early readers, middle grade, and young adult literature, this is a good opportunity to ensure books featuring BIPOC characters are easily findable.
• new issue: the Spring 2025 issue of Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art features multiple articles on the importance of reparative description in GLAM:
  • Critical Cataloging: Researching American Art History on Its Own Terms by Tracy Stuber, Jennifer Way
  • Critical Cataloging, or Why Collection Descriptions Should Be Reviewed by Martien de Vletter
  • Considering Asian American Collections and Critical Cataloging by Christina Ayson-Plank, Rihoko Ueno
  • The Incluseum Metadata Schema: An Ongoing Learning Journey by Rose Paquet
  • Critiquing the Catalog: The Fine Arts (N) Range of the Library of Congress Classification System, Systemic Bias, and the Potential of Digital Technologies by Stefanie Hilles
  • A Conversation on Critical Cataloging by Bree Midavaine, Rosalie Hooper, Sophia Meyers
• new article: The African American Subject Funnel Project: Definitions, History, and Processes by Glenda Alvin, Erica A. Bruchko, and Michelle Cronquist in College & Research Libraries News
• new article: Sustainably Critical Cataloging: Maximizing the Impact of Term Funding with the Black Bibliography Project by Mara Caelin, published in RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage
• new podcast episode: Violet Fox on the Catapod podcast, hosted by William Blueher. We talk about the Cataloging Lab, recent changes in LCSH, the perils of overstandardization, questions about who should be maintaining our cataloging and classification standards and who should pay for that work, cataloging staffing trends, the tension between the Library of Congress and the Program for Cooperative Cataloging, the work of the PCC EDIBA Advisory Committee (Program for Cooperative Cataloging’s Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging, Accessibility Advisory Committee), privacy in name authority records, zine librarianship and zine cataloging, why librarians should edit Wikipedia, and more.
• new webinar recording: Inclusive Cataloging: One Step at a Time, from the Evergreen Library System. Topics include the adoption of terms from Homosaurus, the adoption of the optional arrangement of the Dewey 200s by the Springfield City Library, local terminology in the Evergreen ILS, and an “Illegal immigration” project.

upcoming:

• Thursday July 17: Metadata Justice in Oklahoma Libraries & Archives Symposium, hosted by the University of Central Oklahoma. Free and online. Sessions: 
  • Perspectives on SACO Work in Uncertain Times / Michelle Cronquist, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Allison Bailund, San Diego State University; Chereeka Garner, University of Central Florida; Beck Schaefer, York University; Deborah Tomaras, Marist University
  • The Importance of Community: Planning a Reparative Description Symposium in Your State / Nicole Smeltekop, Oklahoma State University
  • Partners and Neighbors: Reparative and Inclusive Description Projects and Partnerships at the University of Arkansas / Katrina Windon, Joshua Youngblood, and Adam Heien, University of Arkansas Libraries
  • Repairing the Catalog: Using Reparative Description for Indigenous Subjects / Erica Moore, Cameron University Library
  • The Zine Subject Thesaurus: Reflecting Radical Culture in Controlled Vocabulary / Violet Fox, Galter Health Sciences Library, Northwestern University and Amanda Stevens, Anchor Archive Zine Library
• Thursday October 9: Arrangement & Description for Future Communities webinar and live discussion, part of the DHPSNY Dialogues series from Documentary Heritage and Preservation Services for New York

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:

• new book: Platform Power and Libraries, edited by Christine Smith and published by Library Juice Press. This book “dissects the power dynamics inherently embedded to platforms that library practitioners and patrons must navigate.” Highly relevant to cataloging & metadata folks thinking about the restrictions of our vendor-controlled ILS and LSP environments! Contents:
  • Platform Power and Libraries / Christine F. Smith
  • Challenging Digital Property Regimes in Public Libraries / Elena Rowan
  • Entanglements: How Academic and Commercial Streaming Film Platforms are Reshaping Academic Libraries, Research, and Learning / lisa Hooper
  • Digital Heritage after Platformisation: Double Binds at Two Legal Deposit Libraries / Kieran Hegarty
  • The Closed-Loop: Academic Publication and the Data Surveillance Conundrum / Jordan S. Sly and Joseph A. Koivisto
• new draft report available for comment: Draft PCC Guiding Principles for Use of AI and Machine Learning Technologies in Cataloging and Metadata Work. Please consider giving feedback by the August 1 deadline! This is a three-page document with broad guiding principles:
  • AI is a tool to increase quality and efficiency
  • Human autonomy is essential
  • Metadata standards and practices apply equally
  • AI usage should be beneficial
• new report: PCC Task Group for Metadata Related to Indigenous Peoples of the Americas Final Report, including:
  • results of a survey on library metadata related to Indigenous Peoples
  • statements on Indigenous Peoples’ right to self-determination in naming and encouraging reparative descriptive practices
  • list of alternative vocabularies to LCSH to describe Indigenous groups and topics (appendix D)
• new report: PCC SCS Task Group on Privacy in Name Authority Records, including:
  • field-by-field best practices for whether a cataloger should provide information about people in name authority records
  • example scenarios and suggested actions
  • guidance in evaluating resources to use in 670 fields
  • boilerplate text for responding to privacy-related requests to remove information from records.
• new blog post: Targeting Books for Removal at U.S. Military Libraries by Violet Fox at ACRLog, discussing the use of 20 subject headings such as Allyship, Gender identity, and White privilege (Social structure) to review catalogs for books with “divisive concepts” and remove them from military college libraries
• new blog post: “Queer” Before “Queer”: Language, Clubs, and Hidden Histories in the Archival Collections by Elena Abou Mrad and Elizabeth (Lizzie) Shack on the South Street Seaport Museum blog
• new post: This Library in New Zealand Is Replacing Dewey With a System Rooted in Māori Tradition by John Burns in 1000 Libraries Magazine, about the Te Ao Māori classification system [and another story about that change] Te Awe Library trials new shelving system for mātauranga Māori literature
• new blog post: Reimagine Descriptive Workflows in the UK and Ireland: An OCLC RLP Community-Informed Discussion by Merrilee Proffitt
• new paper: Tackling Embedded Bias in Resource Descriptions through User Feedback and User-Driven Metadata by Savannah Lake and Joseph Nicholson, a paper presented at ACRL 2025
• new article: LCSH, Transparency, and the Impact of Collective Action: Demystifying the Subject Heading Approval Process by Brinna Michael, published in TCB: Technical Services in Religion & Theology. “A narrative reflection on the impact of professional networking and collective action to enact change through the Library of Congress Subject Heading proposal process.” Describes the efforts of the cataloging community to encourage LC to reject the proposed revision of the LCSH Trans-exclusionary radical feminism to Gender-critical feminism, led by the SACO Gender and Sexuality Funnel
• new bibliography: Cataloging Ethics & Subject Headings, a list of 2024 articles compiled by Tim Hasin, published in TCB: Technical Services in Religion & Theology
• new webinar recording: Librarians and Social Justice: ‘Change the Subject’ panel discussion, hosted by the University of Minnesota Libraries in April 2025, speakers and topics included:
  • Aiden Bettine on Homosaurus terms and LGBTQ inclusive subject headings
  • Kristi Bergland and Cathy Coats on retrospectively adding accessibility information for DVDs in the libraries’ collections
  • Lara Friedman-Shedlov on reparative description and addressing harmful language in archival materials
  • Tina Gross on subject headings and being part of the “Change the Subject” documentary
  • Natalie Holmes on cataloging Sámi materials
  • Amy Riegelman on advocating for a change to the term “Blacks” in the American Psychological Association’s Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms
• new webinar recording: all five videos from the webinar series Engaging with Critical Cataloging Past and Present, hosted by Minitex, are now available:
  • Library of Congress Subject Heading Authority Work, presented by Elissah Becknell
  • Voices of the Catalog: A Digital and Oral History of Hennepin County Catalogers, presented by Amy Gabbert-Montag, Charlotte Kadifa, and Jaylene Telford
  • Working Together to Improve Disability and Medical Subject Headings, presented by Violet Fox
  • Critical Cataloging and the American Library Association Subject Analysis Committee, presented by Tina Gross
  • Reviving the Hennepin County Authority File,  presented by David Lesniaski
• new-ish webinar recording: Works in Progress Webinar: Developing and Maintaining Culturally Conscious Descriptive Practices at the Rockefeller Archive Center, presented in January 2025 by Amy Berish, Katherine Martin, and Darren Young. “The webinar focuses on how Culturally Competent Description exists in the context of the Rockefeller Archive Center, how reparative description and bias consciousness has been operationalized in day-to-day processing tasks, and how we have sustained the work over the long term.”
• new tool: the Dewey 200s Optional Arrangement Conversion Tool, created by created by Mark Swenson at the Winnetka-Northfield Public Library District. This relies on the work done by Rebecca Green, former editor of the Dewey Decimal Classification, in mapping the 200s (Religion) standard classes to an optional arrangement for the Bible and specific religions
• new tiktok video: Reparative Description in Library Catalogs, discussing the Michigan State University Symposium on Reparative Description in Library Catalogs held in April 2025

The AI-whatever corner:

• new scholarly article: Investigating the Capabilities and Limitations of Machine Learning for Identifying Bias in English Language Data with Information and Heritage Professionals by Lucy Havens, Benjamin Bach, Melissa Terras, Beatrice Alex, a paper from the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems describing machine learning efforts in remediating gendered language
• new updates: PCC FAQ: Cataloging of Resources Generated Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) Software

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:

• Friday May 30: Decolonizing the Library Catalog presented by Karl Pettitt, sponsored by NETSL (New England Technical Services Librarians)
• Wednesday June 4: Unseen Labor Farewell Celebration, live-streamed presentation about the embroidery exhibit highlighting the invisible labor of cataloging librarians curated by Ann Kardos
• Monday June 9: Reframing Authority Control to Balance Creators’ Autonomy and Users’ Needs, webinar presented by Violet Fox and Joshua Barton for the Continuing Education and Equity and Inclusion committee of NASIG
• 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
• Friday June 26–Monday June 30: American Library Association ALA Annual Conference. Critcat-related sessions include:
  • Enhancing Library Metadata for LGBTQ+ Users: A User-Centric Approach, presented by Karen Snow and Heather Moulaison-Sandy
  • Reparative Metadata Assessment with MaRMAT: A New Tool for Identifying Harmful and Outdated Language, presented by Kaylee P. Alexander and Rachel Jane Wittmann (discussing the Marriott Reparative Metadata Assessment Tool)
  • Assessing Metadata for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in Cultural Heritage Institutions, presented by Rachel Jane Wittmann, Kaylee P. Alexander, Anna Neatrour, Crystal Yragui
  • Zine Thesaurus: An Alternative to LCSH for Radical Resources, presented by Violet Fox and Jesse Cole
  • Critical Collaborations: African American Subjects and LCSH (poster session), presented by Glenda M. Alvin, Kaylin Blount, Erica A. Bruchko, Chereeka Garner, Michele Fenton (about the African American SACO Funnel)
  • Creative Cataloging: Developing a Classification for the Pride Center of New Jersey (poster session), presented by Dominique Dixon, Maria Gorbunova, Emil Lawrence
  • Uncovering Systemic Bias in Library of Congress Subject Headings: A Comprehensive Study on Gendered Headings (poster session), presented by Sungmin Park and Yuji Tosaka
• Thursday July 17: Metadata Justice in Oklahoma Libraries & Archives Symposium, hosted by the University of Central Oklahoma
• Thursday October 9: Arrangement & Description for Future Communities webinar and live discussion, part of the DHPSNY Dialogues series from Documentary Heritage and Preservation Services for New York

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:

• new scholarly article: AI Chatbots and Subject Cataloging: A Performance Test by Brian Dobreski and Christopher Hastings, published in Library Resources & Technical Services. “Overall performance of these tools was poor, particularly for assigning classification numbers.”
• Machine Learning Methods for Isolating Indigenous Language Catalog Descriptions by Yi Liu, Carrie Heitman, Leen-Kiat Soh & Peter Whiteley, published in AI & Society

Upcoming:

• Thursday May 8: book launch for Ways of Knowing: Oral Histories on the Worlds Words Create, edited by Amanda Belantara and Emily Drabinski
• Thursday May 8–Thursday May 22: free webinar series titled Engaging with Critical Cataloging Past and Present, presented by Minitex. Sessions include:
  • Thursday May 8: Critical Cataloging and the American Library Association Subject Analysis Committee with Tina Gross
  • Thursday May 22: Reviving the Hennepin County Authority File with David Lesniaski
• 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
• Thursday July 17: Metadata Justice in Oklahoma Libraries & Archives Symposium, hosted by the University of Central Oklahoma
• Thursday October 9: Arrangement & Description for Future Communities webinar and live discussion, part of the DHPSNY Dialogues series from Documentary Heritage and Preservation Services for New York

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

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:

• new book: Ways of Knowing: Oral Histories on the Worlds Words Create edited by Amanda Belantara and Emily Drabinski, featuring oral histories with the creators and editors of some of the most widely used alternative vocabularies in libraries: Chicano Thesaurus, A Women’s Thesaurus, and Homosaurus

• new podcast episode: Treshani Perera interview about inclusive metadata on the Catapod podcast, hosted by William Blueher
• new post: Classification as Colonization: The Hidden Politics of Library Catalogs by Mike Olson on The Scholarly Kitchen, disscussing the recent LCSH changes to the Gulf of Mexico and Mount Denali
• new blog post: Anticipatory Obedience at the Library of Congress by Violet Fox on ACRLog, discussing the recent LCSH changes to the Gulf of Mexico and Mount Denali
• new letter from Sandy Berman about the recent LCSH changes to the Gulf of Mexico and Mount Denali. Thanks to Jenna Freedman for the upload!

• 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

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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).

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Upcoming:

• 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 10–Thursday May 22: free webinar series titled Engaging with Critical Cataloging Past and Present, presented by Minitex. Sessions include:
  • Thursday April 10: Voices of the Catalog: A Digital and Oral History of Hennepin County Catalogers with Amy Gabbert-Montag, Jaylene Telford, and Charlotte Kadifa
  • Thursday April 24: Working Together to Improve Disability and Medical Subject Headings with Violet Fox
  • Thursday May 8: Critical Cataloging and the American Library Association Subject Analysis Committee with Tina Gross
  • Thursday May 22: Reviving the Hennepin County Authority File with David Lesniaski
• Thursday April 10th: Jumpstart Inclusive Cataloging, a half-day online course hosted by Library Journal and School Library Journal. Presentations include:
  • The Past and Future of Inclusive Cataloging by Violet Fox
  • Indigenous Cataloging: Centering Indigenous Cultures, Communities, Collections by Ashley Edwards and Taya Jardine
  • Cataloging with Homosaurus: Advocating for LGBTQIA+ Resources and Discoverability by Jay L. Colbert, Chloe Noland, and Adrian Williams
  • Ideas to Action: Getting Started with Reparative Cataloging by Matthew Bright
  • Tools and Strategies for Auditing and Recataloging Nonfiction by Meghan O’Keefe
• Monday April 21st: ‘Change the Subject’ Documentary Screening and Panel Discussion hosted by the University of Minnesota Libraries. The panelists:
  • Aiden Bettine on Homosaurus terms and LGBTQ inclusive subject headings
  • Cathy Coats on retrospectively adding accessibility information for DVDs in the libraries’ collections
  • Lara Friedman-Shedlov on reparative description and addressing harmful language in archival materials
  • Tina Gross on subject headings and being part of the documentary
  • Natalie Holmes on cataloging Sámi materials
  • Amy Riegelman on advocating for a change to the term “Blacks” in the American Psychological Association’s Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms
• Tuesday May 6: book launch for Ways of Knowing: Oral Histories on the Worlds Words Create, edited by Amanda Belantara and Emily Drabinski
• 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
• Thursday October 9: Arrangement & Description for Future Communities webinar and live discussion, part of the DHPSNY Dialogues series from Documentary Heritage and Preservation Services for New York

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

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.

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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:
  • LC Subject Heading Remapping: Making Good on Good Intentions by Monique Rio
  • Enhancing MARC Language Metadata with Ruby and Indigenous Tenacity by Beck Davis
  • “Wait, Why Are We Doing This Again?” Cultural Humility Approaches to Metadata Remediation by Devon Murphy
• 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!

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:

• New call for chapter proposals:  The Relationships of Description: Experiencing the Power & Politics of Language (book under contract with Routledge), edited by Jamie A. Lee, Gracen Brilmyer, Joyce Gabiola & Sandy Littletree. “We seek chapter proposals that offer deep reflections on description practices across libraries, archives, and museums. We especially seek submissions that draw on critical experiences, reflections, and interventions that draw on critical race studies, gender and sexuality studies, queer theory, trans theory, Indigenous studies, disability studies, and/or other critical perspectives. We encourage submissions from international perspectives—from within and beyond North America, including Eastern and Western Europe, Africa, Middle East, and Asia.” Chapter proposals due February 1.
• New-ish survey: the LAIPA (Latin American and Indigenous Peoples of the Americas) SACO Funnel is reviewing how people of Latin American descent and Spanish speakers are represented in the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) and their new “Hispanic Americans” LCSH survey asks questions about what terminology is most commonly used for resources about Latin Americans/Hispanic Americans
• New podcast episode: episode 277 of Circulating Ideas is titled Inclusive Cataloging: Histories, Context, and Reparative Approaches, featuring an interview with Billey Albina, Elizabeth Nelson, and Rebecca Uhl, editors of the 2024 book Inclusive Cataloging
• New blog post: Naming Women in the Johnson Publishing Company Archive by Jacob Wolf, on the Society of American Archivists (SAA) Descriptive Notes blog. The blog’s editorial team is currently soliciting posts for a Inclusive Description series on inclusive and reparative projects and processes (and more) in archives and libraries.
• New scholarly article: Engaging the Space Between Minimal Processing and Inclusive Description to Create More Sustainable and Ethical Workflows by Alexandra deGraffenreid, published in The American Archivist
• New scholarly article: Archival Authority Records and the Potential of Human-centered Archival Description by Maristella Feustle, published in The American Archivist
• New scholarly article: Defining harmful content statements: cultural humility work that leads to institutional change and accountability by Challen R. Wright and Irina Rogova, published in the Journal of Documentation
• New scholarly article: Iniciativas de listas de encabezamientos de materia y tesauros para la equidad y la justicia social (Subject Headings Lists and Thesauri Initiatives for Equity and Social Justice) by Fabiola Rubim Silva and Paula Regina Dal’Evedove, published in Anales de Documentación
• New conference paper: Computational Approaches for Addressing Problematic Terminology in Museum Catalogues: A Knowledge Graph of Museum Critical Cataloguing Guidelines by Erin Canning, published in The Semantic Web: ESWC 2024 Satellite Events
• New scholarly article: Identifying Metadata Quality Issues Across Cultures by Julie Shi, Mike Nason, Marco Tullney, and Juan Pablo Alperin, published in College & Research Libraries. “Reviewing a sample of records, we identified and classified issues stemming from how metadata and communities press up against each other to intentionally reflect (or not) cultural meanings.”

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!