Presentation for LIS415 Class For Class Use Only

1. Prejudice and Bias in Controlled Vocabularies and Classification Presentation for LIS415 Class Use Only December 12, 2009 Kelly Shand, Arlene O'Connell, Alison Hunt

6. Although prejudice and bias are normally considered harmful, even hateful, they can be positive or negative.

9. Name authority files are controlled vocabularies in the broadest sense. They are usually considered separately from subject vocabularies.

11. Prejudice and bias within the system Language Semantic : The meaning of the element, and of the complete statement. Syntactic : The way in which the language elements are joined together to form statements. Effective (Pragmatic): Intended or unintended effects statements have on the recipients. Semantic rules tend to be policy matters and likely to vary among vocabularies even within one system. A concept cannot be expressed without language...this is a systemic problem .

12. Literary Warrant or Controlled Vocabulary The Guiding Principal Which Introduces Prejudice and Bias Controlled vocabulary is a carefully selected list of words and phrases, which are used to tag units of information so that they may be more easily retrieved by a search. Indexing and retrieval are linked; the indexing language and retrieval technique are interdependent. Effective communication requires that source and receiver understand the message in the same way.

13. Prejudice and bias within the system LC Subject Heading: Alien - Alien Abduction Alien Being (Extraterrestrial) Alien Criminals Homosexual - Anti-homosexual bias Sex Instruction for Homosexual Men Lesbians - Abuse of Lesbian Partners Gay & Lesbian Liberation Movement Wife Abuse - Religious Aspects Christianity Judaism

14. Kaffirs, The Jewish Question, Women as Librarians, water closet. These 4 headings represent the racist, chauvanistic and confusing ways of a subject vocabulary. Prejudice and bias in the expression of subject vocabularies...

15. A Timeline for Sanford Berman Born 10-6-1933 in Chicago. B.A. in Political Science UCLA 1955. MLS Catholic University of America 1961. D.C. Public Library 1957-1962. U.S. Special Services Librarian West Germany 1962-1966. Schiller College West Germany 1966-1967. UCLA research library 1967-1968. University of Zambia 1968-1970. Makerere University Library, Uganda 1970-1972. Hennepin County Library, Minnesota 1973-1999.

16. Sanford Berman The first radical militant librarian. Mentor, cataloger, advocate, gadfly. Created a catalog for HCL that was a national model. Believed in dignity, common sense and current terminology when using subject headings. Created headings when LCSH was termed offensive. Campaigned for the deletion or change of dozens of headings at the Library of Congress, which he once called The Great Washington Behemoth.

17. Yellow Peril now refers to a comic strip in LCSH instead of Asian Communism Hansen's Disease is a See also in refeStreamline vocabulary revision processrring to Leprosy. One of LC's firm stands against Berman Fossil Man is now Fossil Hominids or prehistoric peoples.

18. Fiction Access The Hennepin County Library catalogers added fictional character names to records for patron access. You could find Marple, Jane(Fictional Character) to Skywalker, Luke(Fictional character). The HCL catalog led the way in socially relevent subject headings and ease of use for patrons. Dignity, common sense, patron access were the components. When the Library of Congress had problems with social issues as subject headings they went to HCL to see what they had done.

19. Berman, Olson, Lawson Berman advocated for common sense and dignity in subject cataloging. Olson wrote that a library catalog is reflective of the values of the society that creates it. Therefore subject headings should be changed and adapted along with the society. The catalog cannot remain static. Lawson thinks that using social tagging as an addition to official subject heading will allow greater access. It's another way to get the books to the patrons easily.

20. What can we do to make subject access more accurate, fair and effective? Prejudice and bias in the application of subject vocabularies...

29. This access revolution can make subject vocabularies less prejudiced and biased inclusive and responsive effective for everyone.

30. ONLY CONNECT Prejudice and Bias in Controlled Vocabularies and Classification Kelly Shand, Arlene O'Connell, Alison Hunt This presentation for LIS415 was written for class use only

31. Bibliography Battles, Matthew. Library: an unquiet history . New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company. 2003 Berman, Sanford. Prejudices and Antipathies: A Tract on the LC Subject Heads Concerning People. North Carolina and London: McFarland & Company, Inc. 1993. ---. Words, Meanings, and People. San Francisco: Inernational Society for General Semantics. 1982. ---. Worth Noting: Editorials, Letters, Essays, an Interview, and Bibliography. North Carolina and London: McFarland & Company, Inc. 1988. Cataloging Special Materials: Critiques and Innovations. Ed. Sanford Brown. Pheonix, Arizona: The Oryx Press. 1986. Chan, Lois Mai. Library of Congress Subject Headings: Principles and Application. 4th ed. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2005. Catologing Heresy: Challenging the Standard Bibliographic Product. Based on the Proceedings of the Congress For Librarians, February 18, 1991. Ed. Bella Hass Weinberg. New Jersey: Learned Information, Inc. 1992. Everything you always wanted to know about Sandy Berman but were afraid to ask . Ed. Chris Dodge and Jan DeSirey. North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. 1995. Lawson, Karen G. Mining Social Tagging Data for Enhanced Subject Access for Readers and Researchers. The Journal of Academic Librarianship vol. 35, no. 6 November 2009, p.574-582. Elsevier Inc.

32. Bibliography cont. Olson, Hope A . " Difference, Culture and Change: The Untapped Potential of LCSH ." Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 29, no. 1 (2000): 53-71. DOI 10.1300/J104v29n01_04 accessed from Simmons Library November 22, 2009. ---. The Power to Name Locating: The limits of subject representation in libraries. Dordrecht, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2002. ---. " Thinking Professionals: Teaching Critical Cataloguing." Technical Services Quarterly 15, no. 1 (1997): 51-66. DOI 10.1300/J124v15n01_06 accessed from Simmons Library December 8, 2009. Olson, Hope A., and John J. Boll. Subject Analysis in Online Catalogs. Second Edition. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited. 2001. Šauperl, Alenka. Subject Determination During the Cataloging Process . Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. 2002. Svenonius, Elaine. The Intellectual Foundation of Information Organization . Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. 2000. Taylor, Arlene G. and Daniel N. Joudrey. The Organization of Information . 3rd ed. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited. 2009. Theory Subject Analysis: A Sourcebook. Ed. Chan, Lois Mai, Phyllis, A. Richmond, and Elaine Svenonius. Littleton, CO: Libraries Unlimited, Inc. 1985. Wright, Alex. Glut: Mastering Information through the Ages . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 2007.