Are We Building Bridges or Walls? Opportunities and Challenges in Mitigating Bias in Our Library Catalogs
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This document discusses opportunities and challenges in mitigating bias in library catalogs. It explores how catalogers' lived experiences influence their work and the importance of bringing those experiences into cataloging. The document addresses balancing inclusion with privacy for creators and changing subject headings. Resources on ethics in name authority control and queering library classification systems are provided to engage users in improving catalogs.
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Are We Building Bridges or Walls? Opportunities and Challenges in Mitigating Bias in Our Library Catalogs
- 1. Are we building bridges or walls? Opportunities and challenges in mitigating bias in our library catalogs Guy Frost • Marlee Givens • Erin Leach • Sofia Slutskaya • Robert Taylor
- 3. “The project of systematically removing evidence of bias from library structure makes that shock rarer for students to encounter and more difficult to demonstrate across the reference desk or in the classroom. A queer approach to the problem of library classification and cataloging demands that these reflections of ideology be left as remnants in the structure and that librarians be prepared to teach students how to read what they discover in the text that is the knowledge organization system itself ” Emily Drabinski
- 4. “I am not external to the machine. I am not a foreigner in a strange land. ”
- 5. Catalogers as humans with lived experience Pack Horse Library Project, public domain
- 6. Erin Leach on bringing our lived experience into the work of cataloging
- 7. In what ways do you leave your lived experience at the door when you come to work?
- 8. Catalogers doing the work of cataloging By Eric E Castro from San Francisco - Old card catalog, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64749475
- 9. Erin Leach on cataloger’s judgment
- 10. Erin Leach on the “keepers” of controlled vocabulary
- 12. For example This individual has creative output under the birthname
- 13. Changes in Affiliation Changes in social, religious, or political affiliations and employment
- 14. Where do you draw the line between being inclusive and allowing someone their privacy? Image by John Hain from Pixabay
- 15. Erin Leach on subject headings
- 16. Demographics for Creators Women and geology : who are we, where have we come from, and where are we going? Keyword searching creates the set; facets allow limits by demographics
- 17. Audience with Creator Characteristics In the OPAC: Facets (Limits) Bibliographic Description
- 19. How can we engage users in improving the catalog? Staff and students at Salford City College ©Jisc and Matt Lincoln CC BY-NC-ND
- 20. Resources: Books The Self As Subject: Autoethnographic Research into Identity, Culture, and Academic Librarianship. Chicago: ACRL, 2017 Ethical Questions in Name Authority Control. Sacramento, CA : Library Juice Press, 2019 Adler M. Cruising the Library: Perversities in the Organization of Knowledge. New York : Fordham University Press, 2017
- 21. Resources: Articles Drabinski, Emily. "Queering the catalog: Queer theory and the politics of correction." The Library Quarterly 83.2 (2013): 94-111. Billey, Amber, Emily Drabinski, and K. R. Roberto. "What's gender got to do with it? A critique of RDA 9.7." Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 52.4 (2014): 412- 421. Billey, Amber. “Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should: An argument for simplicity and data privacy with name authority work in the linked data environment.” Journal of Library Metadata 19.½ (2019): 1-17.
- 22. Videos and webinars Contested Subjects: The Politics of Library Classification https://youtu.be/6XYYPDVKQTU Change the Subject https://sites.dartmouth.edu/changethesubject/ Can There Be Neutrality in Cataloging? A Conversation Starter: NISO webinar https://www.niso.org/events/2018/04/can-there-be-neutrality-cataloging- conversation-starter
- 23. Lost in the Stacks programs Uncataloging Neutrality (Interview with Amber Billey, Lost in the Stacks broadcast, Atlanta GA, July 27, 2018, available at http://lostinthestacks.libsyn.com/ ) Our Catalogs, Ourselves (guest, Lost in the Stacks broadcast, Atlanta GA, October 19, 2018, available at http://lostinthestacks.libsyn.com/ ) Cruising the Library (Interview with Melissa Adler, Lost in the Stacks broadcast, Atlanta GA, February 1, 2018, available at http://lostinthestacks.libsyn.com/ )
Editor's Notes
- Our lived experiences as metadata creators: What kinds of biases do we bring to this work? Is it possible to be unbiased or neutral? Do we set catalogers up to fail if we ask them to leave their lived experience at the door?
- Changes in affiliation Where is the line between being inclusive and allowing someone their privacy? Consulting with people
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