Ethics in library cataloging

This week, I watched “Change the Subject,” a documentary that’s related to the ethics of library cataloging.

From the documentary’s official description (Broadley, S., et al., 2019), “Change the Subject” tells the story “of a group of college students, who from their first days at Dartmouth College, were committed to advancing and promoting the rights and dignity of undocumented peoples. Sparked by an instance of anti-immigrant sentiment in their library catalog, these students carried their advocacy all the way from Dartmouth Library to the halls of Congress. The film shows how an instance of campus activism entered the national spotlight, and how a cataloging term became a flashpoint in the immigration debate on Capitol Hill.”

“Change the Subject” was a fascinating documentary and, in one respect, the subject was familiar to me. In 2016 I participated in an email campaign organized by EveryLibrary. Through its online platform, I urged the House Appropriations Committee to remove language from legislation that would prohibit the Library of Congress (LOC) from updating subject heading classifications for the terms “Aliens” and “Illegal aliens.”

In my message at the time, I stated that the replacement of “Aliens” with “Noncitizens” and “Illegal aliens” with “Noncitizens” and/or “Unauthorized immigration” was part of normal revisions that replace outdated terminology (Parkhill, 2016).

I had not realized, however, prior to viewing this video, that efforts to change the subject headings originated with a petition by students at Dartmouth University, or with a specific student searching the Dartmouth library catalog for information related to her research (Broadley, et al., 2019, 04:51).

The American Library Association later issued a formal Resolution in January 2016 (Feldman & Medeiros, 2016, p. 2): urging that the LOC subject heading “Illegal aliens” be replaced with “Undocumented immigrants.”

I thought it interesting that a description of the process through which LOC revised the headings disavowed outside influence as a reason for the change.

“It is a measure of the Library’s professionalism and independence that, in fact, neither external proposal as submitted actually was accepted. Rather, upon review of the totality of the facts and consistent with venerable cataloging practice, the Library apolitically crafted the proposed policy described above and now before the Committee” (Feldman & Medeiros, 2016, p. 2).

From my reading of Hoffman, I learned that LOC Subject Headings “can be slow to change” and “may not always reflect current usage, current knowledge, or the most culturally sensitive terms and phrases” (2019, p. 137).

Hoffman offered some examples of bias in subject headings: “Library of Congress subject headings for ‘Nurses’ and ‘Male nurses’ but not for ‘Female nurses’” and “subject headings for ‘Executives’ and ‘Female executives’ but not for ‘Male executives’” (2019, p. 314). In each instance, one sex is presumed to be the normal holder of such a role, while the other sex is an “exception to the norm” (Hoffman, 2019, p. 314).

Clark & Smith (2022) offered an example specific to my desired profession: “Within LCSH, the subject heading ‘Librarians’ lists as narrower terms ‘Bisexual librarians,’ ‘Gay librarians, ‘Transgender librarians,’ and ‘Women librarians.’ These narrower terms are denoted, or marked, as being differentiated from what must serve as a default value for ‘Librarians.’ There is no narrower term for ‘Men librarians’ or ‘Cisgender librarians,’ which implies that perhaps the default value for ‘Librarians’ is a cisgender, male person” (p. 565).

Another example concerned subject headings for religious concepts of God. In 1971, Sanford Berman drew attention to the fact that the Christian concept of God was listed as a subject heading without a qualifier, e.g. “God,” while “subject headings for the concept of God in all other religions were established with a qualification in parenthesis, such as ‘God (Judaism),’ ‘God (Hinduism),’ ‘God (Islam)’ and so on” (Hoffman, 2019, p. 313). Hoffman noted that the LOC did not change the subject heading for the Christian concept of God to “God (Christianity)” until 2006.

Lourdes Gutíerrez Nájera, PhD offered this statement about the impact of “Illegal aliens” as an LOC subject heading: “The fact that it’s been used and codified in the subject heading, has tremendous power. Because that shapes the way we think and write” (Broadley, et al., 2019, 11:09).

I found this sentiment reflected in the Cataloging Code of Ethics, that catalogers “have significant influence over how information resources are represented through the choices we make” (Cataloging Ethics Steering Committee, 2021, p. 2).

Librarianship as a profession seems cognizant of this responsibility. Rubin and Rubin observed in 2020 that many LIS professionals “have insisted that all classification terms and subject headings be scrutinized more closely for bias regarding race, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, and gender” (p. 345).

One solution I want to highlight is being able to identify our own biases, along with being able to keep track with evolution of language.

Crystal Vaughan (cited by Librarianship Studies and Information Technology) stated that “Language is continuously evolving according to societal discourse and politics; therefore, if libraries are to maintain their social responsibility to provide information to all, including socially disadvantaged and marginalized peoples, then librarians must continuously advocate for changes to subject headings. Librarians must also recognize and reflect on their own internal biases when cataloguing and make it their job to deconstruct language and decolonize the systems that perpetuate the continued marginalization of others” (2021, para. 6).

I’m not sure what solution I can offer regarding outside political influence such as that exerted in 2016 by the House Appropriations Committee. It’s disheartening that an effort in 2016 to change the LOC Subject Headings did not actually come to fruition until 2021 (Hines, 2021).

References:
Broadley, S., et al. (2019). Change the subject [Video documentary]. Digital by Dartmouth Library. https://n2t.net/ark:/83024/d4hq3s42r

Cataloging Ethics Steering Committee (2021). Cataloging code of ethics. American Library Association. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IBz7nXQPfr3U1P6Xiar9cLAkzoNX_P9fq7eHvzfSlZ0/edit

Clark, B. & Smith, C. (2022) Prioritizing the people: Developing a method for evaluating a collection’s description of diverse populations. Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 60(6-7), p. 560-582. DOI: 10.1080/01639374.2022.2090042

Hines, S.K. (2021, Nov. 12). ALA welcomes removal of offensive ‘illegal aliens’ subject headings. ALA Member News. American Library Association. https://www.ala.org/news/member-news/2021/11/ala-welcomes-removal-offensive-illegal-aliens-subject-headings

Hoffman, G. L. (2019). Organizing library collections: Theory and practice. Rowman & Littlefield.

Librarianship Studies and Information Technology. (2021, April 23). Controversies in the Library of Congress subject headings (LCSH): The case of illegal aliens. https://www.librarianshipstudies.com/2020/04/controversies-in-library-of-congress.html

Parkhill, C.M. (2016, June 20). Keep politics out of LOC subject headings. Cynthia Parkhill. https://cynthiaparkhill.blogspot.com/2016/06/keep-politics-out-of-loc-subject.html

Rubin, R. and Rubin R. (2020). Foundations of library and information science (5th ed.) ALA Neal-Schuman.

Feldman, S. & Medeiros, N. (2016). Re: Request to remove “Library of Congress Classification” amendment from legislative branch appropriations legislation [Correspondence to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations]. American Library Association and the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services. https://www.ala.org/advocacy/sites/ala.org.advocacy/files/content/advleg/federallegislation/04-28-16%20Letter%20to%20House%20Appropriations%20Committee%20Requesting%20Removal%20of%20LC%20Classification%20Language.pdf