Ethics and cataloguing

Application of Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)

to metadata associated with items in library stock

In September 2014 I was lucky enough to attend the CILIP Cataloguing and Indexing Group conference entitled: "Metadata: making an impact", at which Ruth Jenkins delivered a lightning talk "Improving subject-based metadata for LGBTQ related young adult books." At the time this was an interesting view on an area that, to my knowledge  had received little previous discussion [do let me know if you know otherwise], and was perhaps suggesting that young adults might benefit from being more easily able to discover resources that might reflect their own life experiences.  

In September 2017 the ALCTS ran an eforum entitled: “Power that is moral: cataloguing and ethics”, which was based on a session discussing cataloguing ethics at the ALA Annual Conference in June 2017. The ALA Code of Ethics was created in 1994, and ALCTS created a specific code for their members in the same year.

Up for discussion was the widespread use of LCSH in cataloguing records, how these terms are based on a Western code of ethics, and how appropriate, or otherwise, their usage is today, particularly in relation to equality.

Following up on this discussion I discovered an article about a small group of students in the US who felt that the use of the LCSH “Illegal aliens” was inappropriate. They got together with library and information professionals and were successful in persuading Library of Congress to withdraw the use of the term.

So, this term is no longer recognised in the up-to-date LC database, however, as with any changes to cataloguing and classification standards, there remains the problem of legacy records – records already in a system, which retain the use of out-of-date practices. The dilemma for most under-resourced cataloguing departments is, do we spend time amending our metadata retrospectively, and if so, how much time can we afford to divert from the cataloguing and classification of new stock. Certainly here at DMU, our previous approach has been to accept that there will always be a quantity of metadata that is outdated.

However, there are times when evidence of past practices need to be eradicated: this is one of those times.

With a view to improving our cataloguing and classification practices to better reflect current thinking and provide better access to our resources for our customers, a search was performed on the library catalogue using the term “Illegal aliens”. This search produced a disappointing 12 results, disappointing because the outcome was greater than zero.

Delving slightly deeper into the catalogue revealed that the term “Illegal aliens” was picked up by the search as it appeared as an LCSH, and as a result of these search results, cataloguers began to investigate and amend the use of this particular LCSH.

The consideration of this particular LCSH is the start of a bigger project to look at the application of subject headings more broadly, particularly in relation to equality, whilst at the same time allowing for those involved in the academic study of a discipline to still be able to identify relevant resources easily. 

ALCTS - eforums

I've discovered how to check and see if any of my blog posts are being read and whilst checking I've noticed that my post headed ALCTS-eforum seems to appear regularly in the list of posts consulted, but I have a feeling this may be for the wrong reasons, or at least, I haven't been specific enough in the heading of that post.

ALCTS hold regular eforums and that post was a report on the forum specifically devoted to looking into catalogue research, following research that had taken place in 2010 - the Year of Catalog Research.

Since then there have been several eforums on topics of great interest to me and I have found them to be very helpful in demystifying several issues. So, from now on, if I report back on any of these eforums, I will be a bit more specific in my headings and tags so you don't get here and feel short-changed.

ALCTS-eforum

Towards the middle/end of last week I “attended” the ALCTS-eforum on the follow-up to "2010: The Year of Catalogue Research". For those of us in the UK who might not be familiar with the organisation, the Association for for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS) is a part of the American Library Association (ALA). On its website the ALCTS says it is



"the premier resource for information specialists in collection development, preservation, and technical services. [and is] the leader in the development of principles, standards, and best practices for creating, collecting, organizing, delivering, and preserving information resources in all forms."



So, having picked up notification of the e-forum via Twitter, I subscribed and waited for things to happen - and, goodness, did they happen! The invitation to subscribe put forward the purpose of the group as to look at some of the following issues around catalogue research:



"How important is cataloging and classification research to your everyday technical services decision-making? Do you find the library literature useful in informing your policies and procedures? Are you producing statistical studies that might help others in the field? How do you disseminate your results? Do you find reviews of the literature helpful? Do you have suggestions for future directions in cataloging research? Is it time to develop formal dissemination forums for metadata research that are separate from MARC cataloging?"



This was followed by an introductory message suggesting that anyone contributing introduce themselves, and describe how they keep up-to-date, any suggestions for best practice, and what research they might be doing in the field of cataloguing.



As you might imagine, there were a variety of library staff contributing to the forum, all reporting many and varied ways of keeping up-to-date, including using RSS feeds, iGoogle, single blogs (like planet cataloguing), wikis, Twitter, some really whizzy personally created sites and a whole range of other things! There was interesting discussion around the value of differing information resources - the web 2.0-type resources compared to the traditional published journal resources.


Another area of discussion was the interest in research into cataloguing. Several suggestions came up, including the use of user tagging compared to the use of controlled vocabulary (like LCSH), and investigating catalogue usage statistics to inform bibliographic record creation.


It was also suggested that the community involved in the discussions seemed to be falling into three distinct camps: RDF / linked data; xml / metadata / digital; MARC / AACR cataloguing. There was concern that there was overlap in the areas of work, but that there perhaps wasn't enough communication and cross-pollination between the groups.


Discussion also focussed on the education of new information professionals and the sometimes woeful amount of time allocated to cover the whole area of cataloguing / metadata etc..


Overall, the e-forum proved to be an interesting sounding board for many thoughts and ideas, a few of which are mentioned above. The ALCTS will be producing a summary of the discussions so it you have an interest in this area, do check their website regularly for this report.


Apologies if this report sounds a bit disjointed: For some reason or other my original post got lost in the ether so I did a re-write - and these just never seem to be as coherent as the originals!


Lynne