Melissa Adler

Transcending Library Catalogs: A Comparative Study of Controlled Terms in Library of Congress Subject Headings and User-Generated Tags in LibraryThing for Transgender Books

Perhaps the greatest power of folksonomies, especially when set against controlled vocabularies like the Library of Congress Subject Headings, lies in their capacity to empower user communities to name their own resources in their own terms. This article analyzes the potential and limitations of both folksonomies and controlled vocabularies for transgender materials by analyzing the subject headings in WorldCat records and the user-generated tags in LibraryThing for books with transgender themes. A close examination of the subject headings and tags for twenty books on transgender topics reveals a disconnect between the language used by people who own these books and the terms authorized by the Library of Congress and assigned by catalogers to describe and organize transgender-themed books. The terms most commonly assigned by users are far less common or non-existent in WorldCat. The folksonomies also provide spaces for a multiplicity of representations, including a range of gender expressions, whereas these entities are often absent from Library of Congress Subject Headings and WorldCat. While folksonomies are democratic and respond quickly to shifts and expansions of categories, they lack control and may inhibit findability of resources. Neither tags nor subject headings are perfect systems by themselves, but they may complement each other well in library catalogs. Bringing users’ voices into catalogs through the addition of tags might greatly enhance organization, representation, and retrieval of transgender-themed materials.

Broker of Information, the “Nation's Most Important Commodity”: The Library of Congress in the Neoliberal Era

This article examines the Library of Congress in the context of the neoliberal information economy in order to apprehend the limits to the Library’s support of democratic principles and participation. Situating the Library of Congress within Foucauldian approaches to studying public institutions while building upon them, the article provides a broad overview of Library of Congress policies and actions since 1985 that signal a neoliberal turn. It also offers an analysis of some of the reports on knowledge organization issued and commissioned by the Library. The article calls for further critical analysis of the Library of Congress’s policies and strategies.

Gender expression in a small world: social tagging of transgender-themed books

Social tagging is evaluated as an information behavior in a small world, using Chatman, Burnett, and Besants Theory of Normative Behavior. A survey was distributed to people who assign tags to transgender-themed books in LibraryThing, an social network site that allows members to catalog and tag their personal book collections. This study first establishes that there is an identifiable community of interest and then lays the groundwork for understanding the function of tagging in sharing information among a marginalized community for whom vocabulary and taxonomies are vital.

Toward a taxonomy of harm in knowledge organization systems

A starting point for contributing to the greater good is to examine and interrogate existing knowledge organization practices that do harm, whether that harm is intentional or accidental, or an inherent and unavoidable evil. As part of the transition movement, the authors propose to inventory the manifestations and implications of the production of suffering by knowledge organization systems through constructing a taxonomy of harm. Theoretical underpinnings guide ontological commitment, as well as the recognition of the problem of harm in knowledge organization systems. The taxonomy of harm will be organized around three main questions: what happens?, who participates?, and who is affected and how? The aim is to heighten awareness of the violence that classifications and naming practices carry, to unearth some of the social conditions and motivations that contribute to and are reinforced by knowledge organization systems, and to advocate for intentional and ethical knowledge organization practices to achieve a minimal level of harm.

Let's Not Homosexualize the Library Stacks: Liberating Gays in the Library Catalog

E n c o u n t E r i n g a b o o k w i t h queer characters and storylines can be a personal or academic milestone—a transformative awakening to selfknowledge. For the more seasoned among us, such a discovery was likely fraught with pathologizing language that reflected the prevailing attitudes of the time. In libraries before the 1970s the books would have been cataloged with the subject heading “Sexual perversion” and shelved alongside books on sex crimes, incest, and pedophilia. Those searching for fictional works about gays and lesbians found themselves identifying with particularly flawed characters whose stories usually ended tragically. These readings often took place in the stacks, in stolen, secret moments. For some, this first experience was the result of directed searches in card catalogs, as Barbara Gittings describes above, while for other readers, like Lillian Faderman, the first book was encountered by accident:

Resistance and possibility: Rethinking the concept of subject access from queer theoretical perspectives

This session will use queer theory to raise important questions about the role of information science in relation to queer communities. Using examples taken from both literary and popular culture, the session will look at the practices of classification in information systems, and how those practices, even when they attempt to facilitate access to resources for LGBTQ communities, ignore disjunctions and distortions that, far from being a barrier to access, form a fundamental aspect of queer expression.