Author: Violet

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 2023:

• New podcast episode: Treshani Perera on Critical Cataloging, Creativity, and Teaching, episode 40 of the podcast LibVoices, which highlights librarians of color. Find the episode on multiple platforms.
• New article: Beyond a Caption by Shukri Sultan, uncovering the complex histories of a building hidden in the catalogue entry of a photograph of a mosque in Beijing. Part of the Critical Cataloguing project of the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA).
• New webinar available: Dropping the Other I-Word: Local Library of Congress Subject Heading Replacements presented by Rebecca Saunders and hosted by ALA eLearning
• New blog post: When the Past Becomes Present: Reparative Description in NYU’s Web Collections by Lizzy Zarate on the blog of the Web Archiving Roundtable of the Society of American Archivists
• New blog post: Acknowledging and Repairing Harmful Description in PHS Collections on the Presbyterian Historical Society blog, describing their work redescribing works in their collections relating to Japanese American concentration camps of World War II
• New slides available: A Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Toolkit for Resource Description, the keynote by Treshani Perera from the DEI DIY: Tools for Enhancing Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion in Your Library virtual event on December 1 hosted by NOTSL (Northern Ohio Technical Services Librarians). Other presentations included:
  • DEI analysis: repurposing Baker & Taylor’s collectionHQ for academic libraries by Alicia Pearson
  • Assessing subject analysis with MarcEdit and spreadsheets by Sasha Frizzell
  • Library of Congress Classification monthly approved changes lists: implementing an ongoing reclassification workflow by Katherine Manifold
  • Replacing obsolete cutter numbers using batch processes by Tyler Cunningham
  • Getting to know SQL: or, 20 minutes of SQL fun! by Rich Wisneski
  • A tale of two workflows: streamlining and automating acquisitions, by Carissa Thatcher and Cara Calabrese
• New blog post: Finding Palestine in the Library by Jamie Carlstone, explaining how Palestine is erased by cataloging policies and sharing search strategies for discovering books published in Palestine
• New resource for inclusive language relating to Palestine: the Inclusive Terminology Glossary (maintained by Carissa Chew through the Cultural Heritage Terminology Network) now has a section relating to Palestine (section 1.9)
• New infographics available: the Infographics for the Anti-racist Library Collection from CILIP features two infographics about Anti-Racist Cataloguing and Classification Practices in Welsh and English, like this one:
  

  

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 2309 were approved in September 2023).

New LC headings of note on list 2309:

• Revised LCSH: split from Anime to Anime (Motion pictures) and Anime (Television programs)
• Revised LCSH: from Bisexuals to Bisexual people [and related headings]
• New LCSH: Handkerchief codes
• Revised LCSH: from Héta Indians to Xetá Indians
• Deleted LCSH: Japanimation [in favor of Anime (Motion pictures) and Anime (Television programs)]
• Revised scope note: for Mestizaje: new scope note: Here are entered works on the racial and cultural blending that occurred in Latin America between Europeans and Indigenous peoples. Works on Latin Americans of mixed European and Indigenous descent are entered under Mestizos.
• Revised scope note: for Mestizos: new scope note: Here are entered works on Latin Americans of mixed European and Indigenous descent. Works on the racial and cultural blending that occurred in Latin America between Europeans and Indigenous peoples are entered under Mestizaje.
• New LCSH: Pansexual people
• New LCSH: Pride flags
• New LCSH: Shōjo manga
• New LCSH: Shōnen manga

New LCGFT of note on list 2309g:

• New LCGFT: Anime (Motion pictures)
• New LCGFT: Anime (Television programs)
• New LCGFT: Shōjo manga 
• New LCGFT: Shōnen manga

LC decisions of note from Summary of Decisions 2309 (click on the link to read LC’s rationales):

• Rejected LCC revision: a proposal to reclassify Holocaust denial literature from D804.8 to to the end of the Holocaust numerical range.
• Rejected LCSH proposal: Hip-hop based education

Upcoming:

• Friday Feb 2: OCLC cataloging community meeting, including a DEI panel discussion with Treshani Perera (University of Kentucky Libraries) and Sarah Hoover (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
• Thursday Feb 15: Creative Solutions in Cataloging, Acquisitions, and Resources Management, hosted by Amigos Library Services, which will have a panel discussion on Classification Alternatives in Public Libraries and possibly other critcat-related content

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

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 2023 and November 2023:

• New call for papers: “Knowledge Organization and Nations,” a special issue of Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science (CJLIS)
• Newly available: the Saskatchewan Indigenous Subject Headings. The project was led by the Saskatchewan Multitype Library Board
• New news article: Public Library updates their systems replacing outdated terminology, describing work done with Indigenous subject headings by the Prince George Public Library in British Columbia
• New blog post: On Searching for the Unknown with Unspeakable Names: Searching PubMed for Disability Research by P.F. Anderson and LaTeesa James
• New blog post: Coffee & Conversation with Sandy Berman by Jaylene Telford & Amy Gabbert-Montag, both MLIS students at St. Kate’s.
• New webinar recording available: Inclusive Cataloging: Maintaining Your Momentum, presented by Violet Fox and hosted by RAILS (Reaching Across Illinois Library System)
• New webinar recording available: Subject Analysis: Centering Historical Lives in Contemporary Archives, presented by Dorothy Berry and hosted by the Center for Archival Futures
• New webinar recording available: Words Matter for the CSU: Inclusive Description Task Force (CSU Libraries Network) featuring California State University panelists Luiz Mendes, Allison Bailund, and Julie Moore
• New presentation recording available from ALA Annual: OCLC’s Transforming Metadata session, with two parts:
  • Inkyung Choi presents “Modeling intercultural Warrant in Ontology Design,” examining how we can manage annotations within classification systems, like the Dewey Decimal System, in ways that mitigate harmful labels
  • Heather Moulaison-Sandy presents “Challenges to Inclusive Catalog Use” work from the Inclusive Catalog Use Lab. Their work applies the concept of code-switching to the question of knowledge organization system use.
• New (to me) report: Elevating and Respecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges and perspectives in UQ Special and Research Collections: Phase 1 Report by Caitlin Murphy, describing an audit of the University of Queensland’s descriptive practice. “The work of Phase 1 resulted in the identification of 75 additional special collections containing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander materials, the uncovering of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages in 41 records, and the overdue recognition of 47 Aboriginal informants to be acknowledged as contributors to their files.”
• New guidelines: Guidelines for First Nations Collection Description. Written by Tui Raven for the Australian library sector, the guidelines have been produced as a collaboration between five organizations: the Australian Library & Information Association (ALIA), National and State Libraries Australasia (NSLA), the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) and CAVAL. View the introductory webinar and find the full text via Trove.
• Conference info: The 2023 Middle East Librarians Association (MELA) Annual Meeting featured some interesting cataloging conversations, including the following (keep an eye out for the recordings on YouTube, which should appear on the MELA website and the MELA YouTube channel):
  • “Cultural Imperialism and Library of Congress Subject Headings on the Middle East” by Blair Kuntz
  • “Access Points in the Library Catalog, a Key to Discovery: Eyes on NACO and SACO Programs” by Iman Dagher and Denise Soufi
  • “Navigating Ethics and Repair in Manuscript Cataloging” by Cyrus F. Zarganj, Evyn Kropf, Jake Benson, and Aicha Azzaoui.
• New-to-me blog post: Social Equity in Library Spaces and Collections
  The post describes the Choska Talfa Room, an Indigenous (Muscogee)-focused space in Bristow Public Library (Oklahoma), as an example of social equity in action. It also discusses the use of the Fus Fixico (“Angry Bird”) Classification System (FFCS), which uses elements from the Brian Deer Classification System, Dewey, and Graph Theory.
• New blog post: Meet Daniel Dias, Princeton University Library’s spring 2023 PACSCL Intern, touching on subject headings relating to the queer community
• New-ish project: QUEERLIT Database, a project by the National Library for Gender Research at Gothenburg University Library and the National Library of Sweden. The project was originally based on translating Homosaurus and aims to develop a thesaurus for indexing LGBTQI literature that is mapped to the existing Swedish Subject Headings.
• New photos available: from the Unseen Labor exhibit and the Words Matter: the Inclusive Cataloging Movement Takes Flight at Fresno State University in California. The exhibits feature quotes from library workers describing why inclusive cataloging is important to them. Check out the 10-minute exhibit highlights video and upcoming events listed on the site.

General shoutout to the Advancing IDEAs: Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility series of blog posts from OCLC Research team, which always highlights interesting things in the profession.

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 2307 were approved in July 2023).

New LC headings of note on list 2307:

• Revised LCSH: from Afghanistan–Politics and government–2001-  to Afghanistan–Politics and government–2001-2021 
• New LCSH: Gender-nonconforming people in library science
• New LCSH: Inuttitut dialect
• Revised LCSH: from /Xam language to Kham language
• New LCSH: Muslim sexual minorities 
• New LCSH: Transgender people in library science

New LC headings of note on list 2308:

Some pretty significant structural revisions to the Israel and Palestine headings; terrific work being done there!

• New LCSH: Israeli-Palestinian conflict–1993- 
• New LCSH: Jews, Israeli
• New LCSH: Jews, Israeli–Relations with Palestinian Arabs 
• Revised LCSH: from Keechi Indians to Keeche Indians
• New class numbers associated with LCSH Opioid abuse: instead of just a medicine-related class number, a new sociology class number has been added HV5822.O45
• New LCSH: Palestine question (1948-)
• New LCSH: Palestine question (To 1948)
• New LCSH: Palestinian Arabs–Relations with Jews, Israeli
• Revised LCSH: Zulu (African people): the 450 (use for) for Kafirs (African people) has been deleted

Also note work being done on special lists: list 2308a, which includes many revisions relating to the change from Gays to Gay people, and list 2310a, which makes significant revisions to LCSH relating to Ukraine and Crimea. Important to acknowledge the large amount of work required to make these long-overdue changes!

Upcoming:

• Monday Dec 4: Cool Things We Cataloged, sponsored by ALA’s Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS), with the following topics:
  • • Fashion show invitations by Melissa Raymond
    • Jackie Robinson comic books by Daniela Rovida
    • Pennsylvania Dutch tin nursing can by Caitlin Lenox
    • Reunionese Creole translation of Greek fables by Natalie Kazmin
    • Star Trek-related fanzines by Indica Mattson, discussing using Homosaurus to address gaps in LCSH relating to sexuality and fan culture

   

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

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 2023 and September 2023:

• New chapter: Disability in the Library and Librarianship by Stephanie S. Rosen, from the book Crip Authorship, edited by: Mara Mills and Rebecca Sanchez. (Full book available through open access.)
• New blog post: Making GW’s Library Catalog Express and Reflect Our Community’s Values, featuring George Washington University librarians Jen Froetschel and Matthew Bright
• New blog post: Re-discovering and mapping the British Library of Development Studies Legacy Collection through global metadata space and time by Alice Corble as part of the Decolonial Maps of Library Learning research project
• New news article: Hispanic Heritage Month documentary screening shines light on harmful terminology by Jayronan Vanthy, published in the California State University Fresno student newspaper
• New slides available: How to use the Cataloguing Code of Ethics at your day job : a hands-on workshop, presented by Jane Daniels (Cardiff Metropolitan University) and Diane Rasmussen McAdie (Edinburgh Napier University)
• New newsletter article: Building a K–12 Archives with Critical and Reparative Description at the Forefront, by Cali Vance (Bush School, Seattle)
• News for Alma users: Homosaurus will be added to Alma Authority Vocabularies by December 2023

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 2305 were approved in May 2023).

New LC headings of note on list 2305:

• Revised LCSH: from Red River Rebellion, 1869-1870 to Red River Resistance, Man., 1869-1870
• New LCSH: Russian diaspora
• New LCSH: Script switching (Linguistics) 
• New LCSH: Sovereign citizens movement 
• New LCSH: Street-food industry

New LCSH headings of note on list 2306:

• New LCSH: Allyship
• Revised LCSH: from Feminine hygiene products to Menstrual products
• New LCSH: Jewish feminists
• New LCSH: Low-wage workers
• New LCSH: Women, Black–Identity

New LCGFT (LC Genre/Form Terms) of note on list 2309:

• Several new LCGFT relating to gender and sexuality in comics, including Bisexual comics, Genderqueer comics, Queer comics, etc.

New LCDGT (LC Demographic Group Terms) of note on list 2308:

• Revised LCDGT: Bisexuals to Bisexual people
• Revised LCDGT: Gays to Gay people

Upcoming:

• Wednesday October 11: Sustainable Reparative Description and You, ALA webinar presented by Marian Matyn (Central Michigan University), Melissa James (Burns and McDonnell Engineering Co.), and Laura Thompson (Michigan State University)
• Wednesday October 11: Less Talk, More Action: Adventures in Inclusive Metadata, webinar hosted by Atla, panel discussion with Jill Annitto (Atla), Cynthia M. Whitacre (OCLC), Heidy Berthoud (LC)
• Wednesday October 11: Reimagine Descriptive Workflows Project webinar, presented by Merrilee Proffitt and Jay Holloway (OCLC)
  • Find recordings of previous talks from the Inclusive Collections, Inclusive Libraries series, hosted by Research Libraries UK
• Friday October 13: The 99th Annual Meeting of PTPL (Potomac Technical Processing Librarians) with the theme “Connect and Reflect: How Library Technical Services Can Engage and Represent the Communities We Serve.” In person in Leonardtown, Maryland. Presentations include:
  • “Creating a reparative cataloging community of practice in the WRLC” presented by Jen Froetschel & Jackie Saavedra
  • “Piloting Reparative Description via the IndigenizeSNAC Project” presented by Diana Marsh & Ia Bull
• Tuesday October 17: Words Matter for the CSU: Inclusive Description Task Force, hosted by the CSU (California State University) Libraries Network. Featuring speakers Luiz Mendes (CSU Northridge), Allison Bailund (San Diego State), and Julie Renee Moore (Fresno State.) “Diversity, equity, and inclusion are at the heart of the inclusive/critical cataloging movement. This panel of cataloging experts will leave participants with a solid idea of what inclusive cataloging is and why it is important. The panelists will provide real-life examples, best practices and approaches to identify projects that we are using in the CSU Libraries Network.”
• Thursday October 19: the next Medical Subject Funnel meeting. Anyone with an interest in improving MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) or LCSH relating to medical/health topics is welcome!
• Sunday October 22: On the Subject of Headings sponsored by ALIA (the Australian Library and Information Association and hosted by the PMI Victorian History Library (in person and streamed online). “We will be looking at how [subject headings] are managed, how they change over time, and how biases form, are identified, and are addressed.”
• Wednesday November 1: Dropping the Other I-Word: Local Library of Congress Subject Heading Replacements, ALA webinar presented by Rebecca Saunders (Western Carolina University)
• multiple dates: keep an eye on the UK Collections Trust website, which has upcoming events such as:
  • Rethinking cataloguing discussion with Kathleen Lawther
  • Creating catalogue advisory notices for racist materials with Carissa Chew

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 July 2023:

• New article: Decolonising Description: Addressing Discriminatory Language in Scottish Public Heritage and Beyond by Carissa Chew in the Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies
  • Find lots of great resources, especially from the United Kingdom, at Carissa Chew’s Cultural Heritage Terminology Network site 
• Four flowcharts for the creation of advisory notices and subject indexing, created by Carissa Chew with the Glasgow School of Art Library
• New LC guidelines relating to subject headings for Indigenous peoples, encouraging contact with Indigenous groups when possible
• New PCC statement: PCC Position Statement on Personal Data in Name Authority Records
• New article: Improving Subject Description of an LGBTQ + Collection by
  Joshua Hutchinson & Junjiro Nakatomi, describing work done to improve subject access to works in ONE Archives, including adding local subject headings
• New paper: LGBTQ+ Catalog Users: A Brief Survey by Karen Snow, Heather Moulaison-Sandy and Brian Dobreski
• New recording: Collaborative cataloguing ethics: a code for all seasons presented by Jane Daniels, Karen Snow, Beth Shoemaker, Diane Pennington, May Chan & Sarah Furger at CALC 23 (Critical Approaches to Libraries)
• New recording: Using the Homosaurus in a public library consortium: a case study presented by Rachel Fischer at CALC 23 (Critical Approaches to Libraries)
• New slides available from the Metadata Justice in Oklahoma Libraries & Archives Symposium held in July 2023 (symposium program)
• New recordings available from the 2023 LD4 Conference. Critcat-related sessions included:
  • Ethics in Linked Data Book Panel, presented by Bri Watson, Alexandra Provo, and Kathleen Burlingame, the editors of the new Ethics in Linked Data book to be published in August by Library Juice Press
  • Proactive Strategies to Improve Underrepresentation in Public Knowledge Graphs: A Wikidata Sprint in UNLV Special Collections Highlighting LGBTQ+ Las Vegas, presented by Darnelle Melvin
  • How do you model my gender? Studying gender representation in the Wikidata knowledge base, presented by the Wikidata Gender Diversity (WiGeDi) project
  • Developing Multilingual LGBTQ+ Linked Open Vocabularies, presented by Shuai Wang
• New recording: Reparative Description: Confronting Anti-Blackness in Archives presented by Melissa J. Nelson and hosted by the Amherstburg Freedom Museum
• New twitter thread about a session titled “Reducing Harm with (Digital) Content Mediation” presented by Whitney Russell, Faith Charlton, Maggie Dickson, Sari Mauro, Alison Clemens, Tonia Sutherland, Dawn Schmitz, Adrienne Pruitt at the SAA (Society of American Archivists) 2023 conference, about reparative descriptive practices in archives
• New Facebook discussion about content warnings for individual bibliographic records with harmful language in transcribed fields
• New to me thesis: Controlled, In Control, and Out of Control: The Effects of Different Forms of Vocabulary Control on the Subject Indexing and Subject Tagging Processes by Chris Holstrom, including a section on “Vocabulary Control, Critical Cataloging, and Racial and Social Justice”

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 2304 were approved in April 2023).

New LC headings of note on list 2304:

• New LCSH: Activism
• New scope note on established LCSH African American wit and humor: “Here are entered works on wit and humor written by African Americans. For works on the caricature of Black people, generally by non-Black people, through the use of makeup, mannerisms, speech patterns, etc. are entered under Blackface.” See similar new scope notes at LCSH Blackface, Blackface entertainers, Minstrels, etc.
• Revised LCSH: from Female circumcision to Female genital mutilation
• New LCSH: Gender-affirming care
• Revised LCSH: from Gender identity disorders to Gender dysphoria
• New LCSH: LGBT activism
• New LCSH: People with social disabilities–Nazi persecution 
• Revised LCSH: from Indecent assault to Sexual assault 
• Revised LCSH: from Sexual reorientation programs to Conversion therapy
• New LCSH: Solutionism
• New LCSH: Suburban Indians
• New LCSH: Transgender people–Medical care
• New LCSH: Transgender people–Psychology 
• New LCSH: Turkey–History–Turkish-Kurdish Conflict, 1978-
• New LCSH: Urban exploration
• New LCSH: Witchcraft in activism
• New LCSH: Xenophobia in education

New LC genre/form headings of note on list 2304:

• New LCGFT: Oracle cards
• New LCGFT: Tarot cards 

Upcoming:

• Thursday August 3: open discussion on proposing changes to “Hispanic Americans,” including potentially separating out “Latinos,” “Latina,” “Latinx,” etc.
• Tuesday August 8 (and repeated Thursday August 17): Rapid Harm Reduction with Locally Preferred Subjects in WorldCat Discovery. “Grace McGann will present on locally preferred subjects in WorldCat Discovery. This feature enables libraries to rapidly reduce harm in item description by defining local, inclusive subjects for display.”
• multiple dates: keep an eye on the UK Collections Trust website, which has upcoming events such as:
  • Rethinking cataloguing discussion with Kathleen Lawther
  • Auditing heritage collections for racist language and imagery with Carissa Chew
  • Creating an inclusive language policy with Carissa Chew
  • Creating catalogue advisory notices for racist materials with Carissa Chew

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 2023:

• New recording from June 2023 OCLC Cataloging Community Meeting, featuring presentations on:
  • The U.S. Board on Geographic Names – An Overview of the Processes for Approving Geographic Names for Federal Use, presented by Betsy Kanalley, Geospatial Products and Services Program Manager, USDA Forest Service
  • Reparative Geographic Name Changes: Case Studies in Cataloging, presented by Kate James, Program Coordinator, Metadata Engagement, OCLC
  • Queering the Catalog: SACO Gender and Sexuality Funnel, presented by Margaret Breidenbaugh, Library Specialist, Cincinnati State Technical and Community College, and Maya Espersen, Cataloging Coordinator, Aurora Public Library (Colorado)
  • Rapid Harm Reduction Through Locally Defined Subjects in WorldCat Discovery presented  by Grace McGann, Associate Product Manager, Delivery Services, OCLC
• New blog post about changes in Dewey relating to drag, transvestism/cross dressing, and gender dysphoria (titled “How can people change their minds about us if they don’t know who we are?” – Harvey Milk) by Dewey editor-in-residence Kathryn Becker
• New news article: From Dewey to Deer: How NWSS is working to decolonize its library featuring the New Westminster Secondary School in British Columbia adopting the Brian Deer Classification [editorial note: for a non-Indigenous collection??]
• New-ish video of presentation: Controlled Vocabularies in Practice: Reparative Description, webinar hosted in April 2023 by the Society for American Archivists Technical Subcommittee on Encoded Archival Standards and Description Section, featuring Michelle Cronquist talking about the African American SACO funnel, Rachel Aileen Searcy discussing the application of Homosaurus terms, and John DeSantis talking about the “Illegal immigration” headings
• New Homosaurus update: version 3.4 (June 2023) terms have been published, building on relationships with the Asexual Visibility and Education Network, Leather Archives and Museum, InterACT (an intersex rights organization), etc.
• New blog post: Changes to our Library: the Gender, Relationships and the Family section describing changes to an in-house classification system at the UK’s Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Education Trust
• New presentation slides: Changing the Representation of Disabilities in Description & Classification presented by Violet Fox, Mackenzie Johnson, Trina Soderquist, and Carlie Forsythe at ALA Annual conference
• New-ish blog post: Creating a Community-Centric Controlled Vocabulary from the Chicago Collections Consortium, written by Gretchen Neidhardt and Kate Flynn
• New-ish presentation slides: If You See Something, Submit Something: A Beginners Guide to Contributing to Controlled Vocabularies, slides from a presentation by Sherman Clarke, Sarah Osborne Bender, Alexandra Provo, Andrea Puccio at ARLIS/NA (Art Libraries Society of North America) conference in April 2023. Discusses contributing to LCSH, Getty Vocabularies, and Wikidata
  • Also relevant, the Cataloging Problems Discussion Group from ARLIS/NA
• New-ish webinar recording: Critical Cataloging: What? Why? How? presented by Alyssa Nance, Tiffany Henry, and Anna Craft at the 2022 Southeast Collaborative Online Conference
• News article from April 2023: WJC urges libraries to reclassify Holocaust denial content, discussing a letter sent from the World Jewish Congress to the Library of Congress arguing that “placing books that deny the Holocaust alongside books about the Holocaust lends Holocaust denying content an undeserved credibility and does a disservice to the pursuit of academic research and intellectual honesty”
• Blog post from last year that I’d missed: Reparative Description and the Archiving of Slavery Documents by Charla Wilson, Archivist for the Black Experience at Northwestern Libraries

I’m doing a brief review of the new LCSH lists for headings that might be of interest to readers of Critcatenate. FYI, 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 2303 were approved in March 2023).

New LC headings of note on list 2303:

• New LCSH: Black lives matter movement in art
• Revised LCSH: Children of egg donors and Children of sperm donors have been cancelled in favor of Donor conceived people
• New LCSH: Female monsters in literature
• New LCSH: Gay men in comics
• New LCSH: Gender-nonconforming people–Identity (with a BT of Gender identity)
• New LCSH: Nostalgia in video games
• New LCSH: Pandemics in literature
• New LCSH: Pansexuality
• New LCSH: Working class Hispanic Americans

New LC headings of note on list 2305x:

• Revised LCDGT: Mormons has been revised to Latter Day Saints

Upcoming:

• • Monday July 10–Friday July 14: 2023 LD4 Conference on Linked Data. Free registration is now open. Sessions include:
    • Ethics in Linked Data Book Panel, presented by Bri Watson, Alexandra Provo, and Kathleen Burlingame, the editors of the new Ethics in Linked Data book to be published this month by Library Juice Press
    • Proactive Strategies to Improve Underrepresentation in Public Knowledge Graphs: A Wikidata Sprint in UNLV Special Collections Highlighting LGBTQ+ Las Vegas, presented by Darnelle Melvin
    • How do you model my gender? Studying gender representation in the Wikidata knowledge base, presented by the Wikidata Gender Diversity (WiGeDi) project
    • Developing Multilingual LGBTQ+ Linked Open Vocabularies, presented by Shuai Wang
  • Tuesday July 11 (and repeated on Thursday July 20): Debiasing Dewey: Righting the past by rewriting the classification. “Hear from senior editor Alex Kyrios and editor-in-residence Kathryn Becker about some of the work in recent years, especially on topics related to LGBTQ people.”
  • Thursday July 13: Reparative Description: Confronting Anti-Blackness in Archives presented by Melissa J Nelson from Archives of Ontario and hosted by the Amherstburg Freedom Museum
  • Thursday July 20: 2023 Metadata Justice in Oklahoma Libraries & Archives Symposium, an online all-day event. Free registration is now open. Sessions include:
    • Everyone Belongs Here: Creating an Inclusive Public Library Local History and Genealogy Collection, presentation by Michelle Skinner, Chickasha Public Library
    • The Fus Fixico Classification System,  a presentation about a new local classification for Oklahoma history and tribal resources, presented by Heather D. Hutto, Justice Sweger, Amanda Harding, M&ABJ Bristow Public Library
    • Constructing a Values-Based Foundation for Metadata Justice Work, an interactive activity run by Bailey Hoffner, Oklahoma State University
    • The Creation of the Tribal Nations of Oklahoma Metadata Database, presentation by Kaitlyn Palone, University of Central Oklahoma; Megan Macken, Oklahoma State University; Lulu Zilinskas, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum
    • Beyond Exploitation: Metadata Justice and Prison Labor, presentation by Kristen C. Howard, McGill University
    • Perspectives from SACO Funnel Coordinators, panel discussion with Michelle Cronquist, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and African American Subject Funnel Coordinator; Margaret Breidenbaugh, Cincinnati State Technical and Community College and Gender & Sexuality Studies Funnel Co-coordinator; Maya Espersen, Aurora Public Library and Gender & Sexuality Studies Funnel Co-coordinator; Sara Levinson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Latin American and Indigenous Peoples of the Americas (LAIPA) Funnel Coordinator; and Deborah Tomaras, Marist College and Comic and Fiction Funnel Co-coordinator
  • Thursday July 25: “Doing Diversity” in Library Collections: Social Justice in Action, presented by Margaret Breidenbaugh, discussing actionable steps in three areas of diversifying collections: critical cataloging, diversity audits, and patron education
  • Tuesday August 8 (and repeated Thursday August 17): Rapid Harm Reduction with Locally Preferred Subjects in WorldCat Discovery. “Grace McGann will present on locally preferred subjects in WorldCat Discovery. This feature enables libraries to rapidly reduce harm in item description by defining local, inclusive subjects for display.”

Please get in touch if I’ve missed anything relevant, I’d be happy to add it to next month’s report!

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 2023:

• New guide: Creating subject headings for Indigenous topics : a culturally respectful guide by Richard Sapon-White, Pamela Louderback, & Sara Levinson. Free 40-page manual with guidance on creating subject heading proposals in LCSH for Indigenous topics.
• New best practices document: Best Practices in Authority Work Relating to Indigenous Nations in the U.S. (May 2023 version) by the Latin American and Indigenous Peoples of the Americas (LAIPA) Funnel. 8-page document providing considerations for reflection before and during Indigenous-related metadata work in libraries, how to ensure information is useful for other institutions, resources for starting research, and email templates.
• New list of resources: Land Acknowledgement and Indigenous Metadata Resources compiled by the Program for Cooperative Cataloging Diversity Equity and Inclusion Advisory Committee (PCC ACDEI)
• New article: A Case Study in Reducing the Presence of “Indians of North America” and Similar Subject Headings by Karl Pettitt and Erin Elzi, published in Library Resources & Technical Services
• New article: Shīʿīsm, Sects, and Subject Headings by Nawazali A. Jiwa in MELA Notes, the Journal of Middle Eastern Librarianship (number 95, 2022)
• New article: From the Catalog Cards to the Cloud: Transforming the Near East Collections for Discovery and Access by Joan Weeks, Muhannad Salhi, Hirad Dinavari, Khatchig Mouradian, and Huda Dayton in MELA Notes, the Journal of Middle Eastern Librarianship (number 95, 2022)
• New podcast episode: episode 13 of Archives & Things features Melissa Nelson interviewing Olivia Wong, Special Collections Curatorial Specialist at Toronto Metropolitan University Libraries, about Wong’s anti-racist description work. (17 minutes). Highlights 2022 presentation titled Canadian Blackface Culture: Confronting Racist Materials in Canadian Archives. Toronto Metropolitan University by Alison Skyrme, Cheryl Thompson, Emilie Jabouin, and Olivia Wong.
• New podcast: episode 91 of the Library Punk podcast is about the Homosaurus vocabulary
• Macro for OCLC Connexion: Macro for the OCLC Connexion client written by Wendy Isicson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for adding MARC formatted 650_7 Homosaurus terms to bibliographic records
• New presentation slides: Cultivating a Culture for Inclusive Metadata by Shay Beezley and Anna Nicole Sump-Crethar
• New zine: Letters from Sanford: Mail, Library of Congress, and Subject Headings, featuring some of Sandy Berman’s letters over the years, compiled by Aiden M. Bettine
• New to me: Diverse BookFinder (DBF) Metadata Community of Practice. Requesting applications for participants to code books for children and youth featuring BIPOC characters for the Diverse BookFinder, an online, searchable database and associated physical collection designed to facilitate the discoverability and exploration of multicultural picture books

I’m doing a brief review of the new LCSH lists for headings that might be of interest to readers of Critcatenate. FYI, 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 2302 were approved in February 2023).

New LC headings of note on list 2302:

• New LCSH: Discrimination against dwarfs 
• New LCSH: Discrimination in the music trade
• New LCSH: Drill (Music) 
• New LCSH: Lynching victims 
• New LCSH: Sexual minorities in comics 
• New LCSH: Sexual minorities in the theater
• New LCSH: Sexual minority activists 
• New LCSH: Spatial trauma 
• New LCGFT: Gay musicals

Upcoming:

• Friday June 9: OCLC Cataloging Community Meeting, including multiple DEI sessions:
  • Reparative Geographic Name Changes: Case Studies in Cataloging by Kate James
  • Queering the Catalog: SACO Gender and Sexuality Funnel by Margaret Breidenbaugh and Maya Espersen
  • Rapid Harm Reduction Through Locally Defined Subjects in WorldCat Discovery by Grace McGann
• Sunday June 23-26: the American Library Association annual conference. Critcat-related presentations include:
  • Changing the Representation of Disabilities in Description & Classification by Violet Fox, Mackenzie Johnson, Trina Soderquist, and Carlie Forsythe
  • Less talk, more action: adventures in inclusive metadata by Jill Annitto, Cynthia M. Whitacre, and Heidy Berthoud
  • Small Team, Big Job: A Model for Sustainable Critical Cataloging and Reparative Description by Melissa James, Marian Matyn, and Laura Thompson

Please get in touch if I’ve missed anything relevant, I’d be happy to add it to next month’s report!

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 standards, practice, and infrastructure.

#critcat in April 2023:

• Request for your participation! Please share, in 50 words or less, why critical cataloging is important to you! Julie Renee Moore is putting together an art exhibit all about reparative description/radical cataloging/inclusive metadata/ethical description and inviting you to be a part of it. Details at: https://cataloginglab.org/quotes
• New blog post: Museum Makers: People Centred Cataloguing by the Powell-Cotton Museum in the UK, describing their reparative description project and “how rethinking cataloguing can lead to a more inclusive approach by sharing, collaborating, and enhancing collections information based on user needs”
• The recently announced grant for the Spanish language translation of Homosaurus catches the eye of Fox News: Hola, Homosaurus: Biden Admin Shells Out Six Figures To Translate Gay Dictionary Into Spanish (news article) and Biden Admin Awards 350,000 of Your Tax Dollars to Create a Spanish Language Version of ‘Homosaurus’ (3-minute video segment presented just a few days before Tucker Carlson was kicked off Fox News)(Editor’s note: sorry about putting his face here!!)
• Another new grant: NEH awards Hula Preservation Society $300K for oral history project news article by Cassie Ordonio, describing a new National Endowment for the Humanities grant to the Kāneʻohe Hula Preservation Society for funding the Hoʻolālā Ulu, Growing Indigenous Hawaiian Knowledge Access project. “The initiative aims to create an Indigenous-centered controlled vocabulary for the nonprofit’s oral history library. The project would also produce guidelines for developing subject headings and preferred terms.”
• New blog post: Q&A: Developing a new Spanish-language controlled vocabulary of LGBTQIA+ terms by Lauren Kirschman, an interview with Homosaurus editorial board member Marika Cifor
• New blog post: Problematic Metadata: Origins and Solutions by Jamie Carlstone, sharing work done at Northwestern University Libraries
• New blog post: The Power of Words to Increase Equity and Access: The Ingalls Library DEI Initiatives by Chloe Misorski, describing changes of language describing Asian, Indigenous, Latine, and undocumented people at the Cleveland Museum of Art
• New blog post: Queering the Library: Naming the Subject Is an Act of Power by Margaret Breidenbaugh at the American Studies Journal blog, discussing critical cataloging past and present and highlighting the formation and work of the Gender and Sexuality SACO Funnel
• New article: Decolonizing the Authority File: Creating Contexualized Access to the University of Calgary’s Indigenous Authors Collection by Susan Dahl and Kaia MacLeod, in the International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion.
• New article: The Cataloguing Code of Ethics 2021: conception, community and continuation by Jane Daniels and Diane Rasmussen Pennington, in Art Libraries Journal.
• New article: Describing Special Collections: Two Projects to Modernize the RBMS Controlled Vocabularies by Brenna Bychowski, Ryan Hildebrand, Sarah Hoover, and Lauren Reno, in Cataloging & Classification Quarterly. Includes information about a project to expand terminology for prejudicial materials in rare materials.
• New project: Project to review the names of indigenous groups, describing efforts to review and revise Indigenous group names in HAPI (Hispanic American Periodicals Index), which provides article indexing for scholarly journals published around the world on Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latinx communities in the United States.
• New special issue available:  Art Libraries Journal Volume 48, Special Issue 2 is focused on Cataloguing Ethics. Articles are based on some of talks from the ARLIS UK & Ireland Cataloguing and Classification Committee’s Ethics video series:
  • Viewpoint: Ethical cataloguing in action
  • The Cataloguing Code of Ethics 2021: conception, community and continuation by Jane Daniels, Diane Rasmussen Pennington
  • Challenging legacies at the British Library by Alan Danskin
  • Indigenous languages in the British Library catalogue: a critique of ‘Indians of North America—Languages’ by Rebecca Slatcher
  • Teaching cataloguing ethics: an exploration of an ethics-infused knowledge organization curriculum by Deborah Lee
• New presentation recordings available:  NETSL 2023 Annual Conference: Passion into Action: Your Initiative in Technical Services, sponsored by the New England Technical Services Librarians, was held in April 2023, and recordings are now available on YouTube. Sessions include:
  • Our Metadata, Ourselves: The Trans Metadata Collective presented by Jackson Huang and Bri Watson
  • Implementing Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) in the Catalog: A Case of Library Connection (LCI) Libraries, presented by Judy Njoroge
  • Sex Negativity & Anti-Queerness in Library of Congress Classification: History, Structure, & Systems presented by Rhonda Kauffman, Tiffany Henry, Anastasia Chiu
  • “Whose Authority? Applying a DEI Lens to Traditional Descriptive Practice,” presented by Laura Daniels, Jackie Magagnosc, Liz Parker
  • Did Libraries ‘Change the Subject’? What Happened, What Didn’t, & What’s Ahead presented by Jill Baron, Violet Fox, Tina Gross
• New article: Library of Congress Subject Headings: A Post-Coordinated Future by Nancy Cooey and Amy Phillips in Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, discussing how complex precoordinated headings hinder linked data & DEI efforts.
• New blog post: Indigenous science book display in UM Libraries, describing an exhibit put together by University of Manitoba Library workers Shirley Delorme Russell and Justin Fuhr.  The post describes the difficulties in finding appropriate resources through the library’s catalog.

I’m doing a brief review of the new LCSH lists for headings that might be of interest to readers of Critcatenate. FYI, 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 2301 were approved in January 2023).

New LC headings of note on list 2301:

• New LCSH: Capitol Hill Organized Protest, Seattle, Wash., 2020
• New LCSH: Chatbots
• New LCSH: Post COVID-19 condition (Disease) [with a Use For for Long COVID (Disease)]

New LC headings of note on expedited list 2302:

• Lots of headings have now been given the macron over Māori (for example, Architecture, Maori is now Architecture, Māori)

Of note in LC decisions: LC received multiple proposals to add new subject headings and class numbers for specific Indigenous groups, but those proposals were rejected because no evidence of consultation with members of those groups was shown. See LC’s Summary of Decisions 2302.

Upcoming:

• Wednesday May 10: Public Forum for RBMS CVRMC Prejudicial Works Terminology, hosted by the Prejudicial Materials Working Group of RBMS’s Controlled Vocabularies Editorial Group, focusing on the 50 proposed genre/form headings to be used for indexing works that are prejudicial in nature or related to systems of oppression.
• Tuesday May 16-Friday May 19: Medical Library Association/Special Libraries Association joint conference. The full schedule isn’t available yet, but please attended these two critcat-related sessions:
  • “Collaborative Approaches to Improving MeSH,” lightning talk by Violet Fox and Kelleen Maluski
  • “Subjected: Investigating the Impact of MeSH Terms on Underrepresented Groups,” group presentation
• Wednesday May 17-Friday May 19: Critical Pedagogy Symposium online event. Critcat-related sessions include:
  • Is Metadata Also Ignorance? Agnotology, Race, and Description by Jose Guerrero
• Wednesday May 24-Thursday May 25: Critical Approaches to Libraries Conference, an online conference organized by librarians in the UK. Critcat-related sessions include:
  • “Using the Homosaurus in a public library consortium: a case study” presented by Rachel Fischer
  • “At the intersection: IFLA LRM, Queer Theory, and Marxism for conceptualising gender variance in the bibliographic universe” presented by Kris Massengale
  • “Collaborative cataloguing ethics: a code for all seasons” presented by Jane Daniels, Karen Snow, Beth Shoemaker, Diane Pennington, May Chan & Sarah Furger
• Thursday July 20: 2023 Metadata Justice in Oklahoma Libraries & Archives Symposium, an online all-day event. The keynote speaker will be Suzette Chang of nonprofit organization Thick Descriptions

Please get in touch if I’ve missed anything relevant, I’d be happy to add it to next month’s report!

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 standards, practice, and infrastructure.

#critcat in March 2023:

• Request for feedback: The Queer Metadata Collective is looking for feedback from catalogers, archivists, and other metadata workers on questions or dilemmas they have encountered while describing individuals, communities, and/or items. See twitter thread for more details and email brimwats@mail.ubc.ca with your input.
• Request for feedback: the draft version of Best Practices in Authority Work Relating to Indigenous Groups in the U.S. is now open for comment. The document will be published in May by the Latin American and Indigenous Peoples of the Americas SACO Funnel. Feedback in the document is welcome.
• New blog post: Queer Cataloguing in UK Museums by Arran Rees, discussing survey results and the idea of queering cataloging
• New issue of Library Resources & Technical Services, featuring articles:
  • Using the Homosaurus in a Public Library Consortium: A Case Study by Rachel K. Fischer
  • Documenting Classification Systems: A Case Study and Considerations by Christopher Straughn
  • Community Forward: Developing an Open and Free Cataloging Standard for Rare Materials by kalan Knudson Davis, Jessica Grzegorski, Elizabeth Hobart, A. Tims
• New article in Journal of the Early Republic: Indigenous, Native American, or American Indian? The Limitations of Broad Terms by Brooke Bauer and Elizabeth Ellis. Open access for a limited time.
• New recordings available as part of the Ways of Knowing Oral History project, funded in part by the Metropolitan New York Library Council’s 2022 Equity In Action Grant, featuring interviews with metadata creators Sarah Pritchard, Mary Ellen Capek, Richard Chabrán,  Lillian Castillo-Speed, Adrian Williams, and K.J. Rawson
• New report: The Report of the SAC Working Group on External Review of LC Vocabularies provides ideas for improving the editorial process for LC vocabularies such as LCSH, including creating an external review board and enabling more efficient methods for submitting proposals
• New blog post: A Conversation with Bri Watson on the University of British Columbia iSchool blog, about Bri’s work as iSchool EDI Scholar-in-Residence 2022/2023 and in the Trans Metadata Collective and the Queer Metadata Collective
• New blog post: “On the other hand… ” by Kathryn Becker on the Dewey Blog about the capitalization of “Black” and “white” in WebDewey.
• New page: DEI Initiative Support from vendor Backstage Library Works gives an overview of their process for replacing problematic terms, including a list of FAQs about “Managing Terms In Your Authority Catalog”
• New journal article: Archives of Revolution by Emma Hart, Sean Quimby, and Karin Wulf, urging critical thought about how revolutions are archived, including reparative description efforts.  Published in Age of Revolutions, an open-access journal.
• Presentation: “The Power to Change Sears is in Your Hands” (video, text and slides) by Violet Fox, hosted by the Interest Group for Bibliographic Standards as part of the Library and Information Association of South Africa’s South African Library Week 2023, discussing recent changes within the Sears List of Subject Headings
• Webinar at Virginia’s Academic Library Consortium Anti-Racism Webinar Series focusing on Metadata & Cataloging, featuring speakers Jeremy Bartczak, Whitney Buccicone, David Heilbrun, and Merrilee Proffitt

I’m doing a brief review of the new LCSH lists for headings that might be of interest to readers of Critcatenate. FYI, 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 2212 were approved in December 2022).

New LC headings of note on list 2212:

• Multiple changes to subject headings relating to Giants, Gigantism, Acromegaly, and Tall people. See the Cataloging Lab entry on Giants for more information.
• Multiple changes to subject headings relating to Alcoholism, Controlled drinking, Drinking of alcoholic beverages, Intoxication, and Temperance
• New subject heading: White supremacy (Social structure) 

Don’t miss the additional list 2212a, which continues the updating of LCSH relating to slavery and updates to “Enslaved persons.”

Upcoming:

• Wednesday April 5: Inclusive metadata: Steps to address diversity, equity and inclusion in your DAM, webinar presented by Sharon Mizota
• Friday April 14:  NETSL 2023 Annual Conference: Passion into Action: Your Initiative in Technical Services, sponsored by NETSL, the New England Technical Services Librarians. Sessions include:
  • “Our Metadata, Ourselves: The Trans Metadata Collective,” presented by Jackson Huang and Bri Watson
  • “Implementing Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) in the Catalog: A Case of Library Connection (LCI) Libraries,” presented by Judy Njoroge
  • “Sex Negativity & Anti-Queerness in Library of Congress Classification: History, Structure, & Systems,” presented by Rhonda Kauffman, Tiffany Henry, Anastasia Chiu
  • “Whose Authority? Applying a DEI Lens to Traditional Descriptive Practice,” presented by Laura Daniels, Jackie Magagnosc, Liz Parker
  • “Did Libraries ‘Change the Subject’? What Happened, What Didn’t, & What’s Ahead,” presented by Jill Baron, Violet Fox, Tina Gross
• Wednesday April 19: Jumpstart Inclusive Cataloging, full-day webinar presented by Library Journal as a followup to their November 8th webinar of the same name.  Sessions include:
  • “The Past and Future of Inclusive Cataloging,” presented by Jennifer Baxmeyer
  • “Critical Data: Make the Case for Change in Your Library,” presented by Rachel K. Fischer
  • “Cataloging with Homosaurus: Advocating for LGBTQIA+ Resources and Discoverability,” presented by Jay L. Colbert
  • “Indigenous Cataloging: Centering First Nations Cultures, Communities, Collections,” presented by Colette Poitras and Stacy Allison-Cassin
  • “Critical Cataloging and Community Input: Khmer Collections,” presented by Amber Wu and Christine Hertzel
  • “Integrating Inclusive Cataloging with Your Vendors,” presented by
    Brinna Michael and Sofia Slutskaya
  • “Tools and Strategies for Auditing and Recataloging Nonfiction,” presented by Meghan O’Keefe

Please get in touch if I’ve missed anything relevant, I’d be happy to add it to next month’s report!

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 standards, practice, and infrastructure.

#critcat in January and February 2023:

• Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Cataloging and Technical Services all-day virtual conference was held February 8, hosted by Amigos Library Services. Sessions included:
  • Re-Thinking Dewey: Re-assigning Dewey Decimal Categories for Greater Equity and Discoverability by Kirsten Brodbeck-Kenney
  • GLAMS Community Activism in Technical Services by Michelle Cronquist, Margaret Breidenbaugh, Violet Fox, Maya Espersen, Adam Schiff & Adrian Williams
  • Dropping the Other I-Word: Indigenous American Representation in a Network Library Catalog Through Local LCSH Replacements by Rebecca Saunders
  • Inclusive Metadata Strategies at Max Chambers Library by Shay Beezley, Anona Earls & Kaitlyn Palone
  • Reparative Reclassification: Small Steps for Positive Change by Lisa Thornton, Melissa Hofmann & Yuji Tosaka
  • African American Superheroes & Asexual Comics: Inclusive Comics Cataloging Practices by Deborah Tomaras, Allison Bailund, Steven Holloway & Kayla Kuni
  • Whose authority? Applying a DEI Lens to Traditional Descriptive Practice by Laura Daniels, Jackie Magagnosc & Liz Parker
• New feature available on OCLC’s WorldCat Discovery to locally re-map subject headings to hide sensitive language/create locally preferred subjects for display and search expansion.
• Launch of the Cultural Heritage Terminology Network, a UK-based “space for praxis-sharing and cross-institutional collaboration on inclusive description issues.” Includes a collated list of over 200 EDI resources for heritage professionals.
• New announcement: “Seed Funding Secured for NIKLA’s Respectful Terminologies Project,” announcing $383,000 being contributed for a Canadian “platform that enables a dynamic, multilingual set of terminologies applied to Indigenous Peoples, places, heritage, tradition, knowledge and cultures.”
• New announcement: “Developing a Spanish-language Homosaurus: Using Multi-language Linked Data to Enhance LGBTQ+ Resource Discoverability,” describing a proposal for a National Endowment for the Humanities grant which was recently awarded to develop a multi-language linked data platform and creating and implementing a Spanish-language version of the Homosaurus vocabulary.
• New article: “Critiquing the Machine: The Critical Cataloging Database” by B. M. Watson, published in TCB: Technical Services in Religion & Theology. The article describes the collection of 600 articles at CritCat.org and a breakdown of the main subdomains of critical cataloging literature:
  • Racialized knowledge organization
  • Indigenous knowledge organization
  • Names, Sex & Gender
  • Queer knowledge organization
  • Disabled / Crip knowledge organization
• New article: “Handicapped has been cancelled: The terminology and logics of disability in cultural heritage institutions” by Brian M. Watson and Beck Schaefer, published in First Monday. The articles addresses the issues around the LCSH heading “Social disabilities,” articulating classification systems often erase disability and replace them with eugenic narratives about overcoming adversity or policing deviance.
• New blog post: “Backstage Looking Ahead… Newer and Stronger Services in 2023” discussing new options created by vendor Backstage for DEI-related authority service,  including broader LGBTQ terminology and more accurate Indigenous Persons access points. While libraries have been already able to authorize pre-existing headings in the National Library of Spain’s authority file (EMBNE) and the Queens Library Spanish vocabulary for a few years, now Backstage will be starting a new process to convert LCSH into Spanish terms, including using those vocabs as well as San Francisco Public Library’s public subject file.
• New-ish blog post: “Writing and Implementing a Statement to Remediate Harmful Language in the Library Catalog,” published in Library Journal in December 2022. Cataloger Andrea Schuba describes the process of creating a Statement of Harmful Language in Catalog Records for the University of Maryland Libraries and provides tips, including explaining harmful content and providing a method for soliciting feedback.
• New blog post: “Riot or Massacre: How One Word Changes Perspective” by Serena McCracken from the Atlanta History Center, describing redescription efforts by Kenan Research Center staff & African American SACO Funnel members.
• New blog post: “FLASHback: Reimagining the Australian Extension to LCSH” by Alissa McCulloch, describing her efforts to bring back the long-dormant Australian-centric vocabulary used as an addition to using LCSH.
• New toolkit: “People-Centred Cataloguing” created by Kathleen Lawther, featuring suggestions and case studies for how museums might take a more people-centred approach to their collections documentation work.
• New tool: Wendy Isicson at UNC-Chapel Hill has developed a new macro to apply Homosaurus headings in Connexion.  
• A cynical Twitter thread about the varying terms used to describe our work, including radical cataloging, critical cataloging, inclusive description, reparative description, ethical metadata, conscious editing, metadata justice, and so on, ad nauseum.
• Here’s a ChatGPT (artificial intelligence)-written blurb about “strategies for decolonizing archival metadata and introducing reparative description.”

New/revised headings of note:

I’m doing a brief review of the new LCSH lists for headings that might be of interest to readers of Critcatenate. FYI, 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 2211 were approved in November 2022).

New LC headings of note on list 2211:

• revised subject headings: from Albinos and albinism to Albinism, Albinism in animals, and People with albinism.
• new subject heading: Gender-based violence
• new subject heading: Right to bodily autonomy
• new subject heading: Sexual minority children
• new subject heading: Solastalgia
• revised subject heading: from Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge (Mo.) to Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge (Mo.) 

Upcoming:

• Tuesday March 7: As part of the ALA Core Interest Group Week, the Authority Control Interest Group meeting will include the sesssion “Authority Control and the Occult: Ethical Expectations for the NACO Contributor,” presented by Guy Frost.
• Tuesday March 7: As part of the ALA Core Interest Group Week, the Core Cataloging and Classification Research Interest Group sessions will include multiple presentations about DEI in classification, including:
  • “Classification from the margins: three alternative classification systems, 1930-1975,” presented by Sasha Frizzell.
  • “A DE&I Cataloging Audit of a Bibliography,” presented by Lisa McColl.
  • “Critical Cataloging and Critical Race Theory: Implications for Cataloging Practice,” presented by Karen Snow and Anthony Dunbar.
• Thursday March 9: As part of the ALA Core Interest Group Week, the Core Metadata Interest Group is hosting a session with two presentations on inclusive metadata.
  • “Public-Facing Statements on Harmful Language in Library and Archival Description: Recommendations for Implementation” presentation by Katie Dunn & Samantha Garlock at University of Wisconsin Madison Libraries.
  • “Words Matter: Supporting a Community Archive Through Inclusive Cataloging” presentation by Elyse Fox, Lynn Drennan, and Pachia Vang, discussing work done to respectfully describe the Southeast Asia Community Resource Center (SEACRC) Collection at Sacramento State Library.
• Thursday March 9: As part of the ALA Core Interest Group Week, the Core Role of the Professional Librarian in Technical Services Interest Group is hosting a session including “That’s the IDEAA* in Technical Services Roles *(Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Anti-Racism, Accessibility),” presented by Natalie Lopez at Crafton Hills College.
• Thursday March 9: First meeting of the new Medical Subject Funnel, co-chaired by Violet Fox and Kelleen Maluski. All levels of knowledge/background are welcome.
• Friday March 10: As part of the ALA Core Interest Group Week, the Core Catalog Management Interest Group session will include “A survey of description: exploring subject access for diverse communities using Python and R,” presented by Brian Clark and Catherine Smith at the University of Alabama Libraries.
• Friday March 10: As part of the ALA Core Interest Group Week, the Core Cataloging Norms Interest Group meeting will include two presentations:
  • “LGBTQ+ Identities, Language, and the Library Catalog,” presented by Karen Snow, Brian Dobreski, and Heather Moulaison-Sandy.
  • “Culturally-Rich Name Authority Records in RDA for Puerto Rican Artists,” presented by Dinah M. Wilson Fraites.
• Monday March 13: Reparative Description in Action Workshop, facilitated by Stephen R. Curley (Digital Archives at the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition) and Jennifer Garcon (Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia).
• Friday March 24: But how do we use it? Ethical cataloguing in practice, hosted by Metadata and Discovery Group in Scotland, featuring Diane Rasmussen Pennington discussing the Cataloguing Code of Ethics.
• Thursday March 30: equinoxEDU Spotlight on Accessibility in Open Source Projects providing information about accessibility considerations for library software, presented by Stephanie Leary.
• Friday April 14:  NETSL 2023 Annual Conference: Passion into Action: Your Initiative in Technical Services, sponsored by NETSL, the New England Technical Services Librarians. Sessions include:
  • “Our Metadata, Ourselves: The Trans Metadata Collective,” presented by Jackson Huang and Bri Watson
  • “Implementing Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) in the Catalog: A Case of Library Connection (LCI) Libraries,” presented by Judy Njoroge
  • “Sex Negativity & Anti-Queerness in Library of Congress Classification: History, Structure, & Systems,” presented by Rhonda Kauffman, Tiffany Henry, Anastasia Chiu
  • “Whose authority? Applying a DEI lens to traditional descriptive practice,” presented by Laura Daniels, Jackie Magagnosc, Liz Parker
  • “Did Libraries ‘Change the Subject’? What Happened, What Didn’t, & What’s Ahead,” presented by Jill Baron, Violet Fox, Tina Gross

Please get in touch if I’ve missed anything relevant, I’d be happy to add it to next month’s report!

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 standards, practice, and infrastructure.

#critcat in December 2022:

• Call for chapter proposals: Inclusive Cataloging: Philosophical Questions and Case Studies in Reparative Cataloging, providing “philosophical and practical considerations for inclusive/reparative cataloging projects.” Proposals due February 8th for the book to be published by ALA Editions and edited by Amber Billey, Elizabeth Nelson, and Rebecca Uhl.
• New updates to the National Library of Medicine’s Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) for 2023 were released, including several revised and new headings relating to population groups, such as revising Blacks to Black people. Many of these changes were spurred by the June 2022 Open Letter to NLM Regarding MeSH Term Changes. Several webinars will provide more information about those changes, and a special listening session about current and future changes to MeSH is scheduled for January 18.
• Great Twitter thread (part 1, part 2) from Tracy Shields about the new changes to MeSH.
• New issue: the Winter 2022 issue of the Journal of Critical Digital Librarianship has multiple critcat relevant articles, especially Toward Ethical and Inclusive Descriptive Practices by Shira Peltzman and Kelly Besser.
• The Queer Metadata Collective is looking for descriptive / catalog policies relating to marginalized communities, individuals, & their works from libraries, archives, and museums. Send relevant policies to Bri Watson (brimwats at mail.ubc.ca).

New/revised headings of note:

I’m doing a brief review of the new LCSH lists for headings that might be of interest to readers of Critcatenate. FYI, 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 2209 were approved in September 2022).

New LC headings of note on list 2209:

• new subject heading: Gender-nonconforming youth–Medical care
• new subject heading: Graphic medicine (Comic books)
• new subject heading and new genre/form term: Manga
• multiple headings changed to remove the term “eskimos,” such as the revision from Inuvialuit Eskimos to Inuvialuit
• multiple headings also changed from “elderly” to “older people,” such as the revision from Abused elderly to Abused older people

New LC headings of note on list 2210:

• new subject heading: Baltimore Riots, Baltimore, Md., 1812
• new subject heading: Cultural translation
• new subject heading: Female monsters
• new genre/form term: Large print books 
• new subject heading: Monstrosity 
• new genre/form term: Queer fiction  
• new subject heading: Religion–Origin
• revised subject heading: from Sex-oriented businesses to Sex industry 
• new subject heading: Sex work
• new subject heading: Sexual minorities, Arab 
• new subject heading: Sexual minorities, Black
• new subject heading: Trans-exclusionary radical feminism
• multiple headings were also changed relating to the federal action to remove “squaw” from place names, such as revision from Squaw Creek (Gallatin County, Mont.) to Storm Castle Creek (Mont.)

Upcoming:

• Wednesday January 11: Cataloging for Accessibility, an ALA Core webinar presented by Teressa Keenan, Head of Bibliographic Research Services at Mansfield Library, University of Montana.
• Friday January 13: User-Centered Cataloging Workshop by Raedial
• Wednesday January 18: NLM Office Hours Special Listening Session: MeSH will provide opportunity for for more feedback about the National Library of Medicine’s Medical Subject Headings.
• January 25: Digitization, Digital Cataloging, and the Minority Communities of the Middle East, a virtual lecture by Josh Mugler of the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, hosted by the Middle East Librarians Association (MELA) as part of their Social Justice Lecture Series 2022-2023 season.
• Thursday February 2: Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Network Conference 2022. “Organised by the SCURL [Scottish Confederation of University & Research Libraries] EDI Network and the CILIPS [Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland] Metadata and Discovery Group Scotland to discuss EDI policies and practices in libraries.” Sessions include:
  • Exploring the ethics of cataloguing with Diane M. Rasmussen Pennington, Senior Lecturer in Information Science, Strathclyde iSchool, University of Strathclyde
  • Inclusive description of moving image at the National Library of Scotland by Ann Cameron, Moving Image Curator at National Library of Scotland
  • A discussion panel on the politics of metadata chaired by Joseph Marshall, Chair of the SCURL Collections and Metadata Group and Associate Director of Collections Management, National Library of Scotland.
• Wednesday February 8: Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Cataloging and Technical Services hosted by Amigos Library Services.

Please get in touch if I’ve missed anything relevant, I’d be happy to add it to next month’s report!