Reducing harmful language in library catalogs
A wonderful documentary called Change the Subject is now available to watch free on YouTube and the Dartmouth College Library website. The film relates the story of a group of students whose fight for justice in their educational environment took them from the library to the halls of Congress. In 2014 when Dartmouth students came across the subject heading Illegal aliens in the library catalog, it didn’t feel like bloodless academic terminology. It was just one of many demeaning and dehumanizing aspects of life at Dartmouth, an example of the institutional racism that made BIPOC students feel alienated from their education and their library. Reforming the library catalog became part of the “Freedom Budget” that the students proposed to the university in their quest for transformative justice.
Meeting with librarians, the Dartmouth students learned that changing catalog terms wasn’t as simple as they had thought. Using standard terminology from controlled vocabularies, with cross-references to alternate terms, is a practice used by library catalogers to bring items together in search results and help users find library resources. Like USF’s Gleeson and Zief libraries, and thousands of other libraries across the U.S., Dartmouth uses standard subject headings issued by the Library of Congress, where changing the terminology is a long, deliberative process.
Dartmouth catalog librarians worked with the students to prepare a proposal for improving the Library of Congress terminology. Though they were turned down at first, the proposal received the backing of the American Library Association, and eventually the Library of Congress decided to make the change: the subject heading Illegal aliens would become the more appropriate Undocumented immigrants.
The Library of Congress issues hundreds of new and changed subject headings every year with no one noticing outside of cataloging librarians around the country. However, this one was different, and became a controversy in the U.S. Congress, where some Representatives sought to reverse the Library’s decision. Change the Subject follows some of the students as they met with supportive Representatives in Congress, who promised to fight to keep the Library’s changed vocabulary. Despite their strong efforts, however, Congressional opponents prevailed, and the offensive term is still an official Library of Congress subject heading.
Problematic terminology in bibliographic description at USF libraries
Partly inspired by the Dartmouth students, many library catalogers all over the country are increasingly committed to developing standards and vocabularies that better reflect and support our diverse library users. Here at USF, our little band of catalogers started a discussion based on the national efforts to change the subject heading Illegal aliens to Undocumented immigrants in the catalog shared by Gleeson and Zief Law Library, in a departure from the Library of Congress vocabulary that we usually use. We asked for input and received overwhelming support from Gleeson and Zief colleagues for making the change, so in 2016 we implemented it.
The initial result was 702 changes in the catalog from Illegal aliens to Undocumented immigrants. We also changed the subject heading Aliens to Noncitizens (500 changes) and made hundreds of additional headings changes such as: Women illegal aliens → Women undocumented immigrants, Children of illegal aliens → Children of undocumented immigrants, Aliens in literature → Noncitizens in literature, etc.
Making the changes requires constant upkeep as thousands of new records enter the catalog every year, many in large batches, so that it’s impractical to examine every record individually. Instead, we run batch processes regularly to identify and update instances of the old terms that have crept in.
We don’t intend to stop with this one example. Gleeson and Zief catalogers are committed to reducing offensive and harmful language in the catalog. Our first step has been to acknowledge that the language we use is not neutral. Our biases, which everyone brings to their lives and work, sometimes have caused us to use or overlook terms that cause harm to our students and colleagues. We ask for your help in identifying these terms.
The Cataloging Lab, a project that crowdsources and seeks solutions to problematic subject headings, has identified a list of “problem LCSH”. Another that we have been thinking about is Child prostitution (implies consent and agency). We know there are many more.
Send us your thoughts in an email to cataloging AT usfca DOT edu. We may not be able to make desired changes right away, but we are developing a process to systematically review and respond to concerns.
For those interested in learning more about how library catalogers are working to create more just and equitable catalogs and cataloging tools, we have prepared a bibliography.
-Gleeson and Zief Library Catalogers: Gina Solares, Shannon Burchard, Debbie Benrubi, Fabiola Hernandez, Justine Withers