Harmful Language in Library Resource Descriptions

Terms and language in our catalog records and other resource descriptions may be outdated, culturally insensitive, and/or harmful.

 

Why is this? 

The MSU Libraries' catalog, and other finding tools, allow users to discover the specific material they need from a vast collection. We are able to provide this access by taking advantage of resources shared among many libraries. This also means adhering to certain descriptive standards, so that records produced by one library can be re-used by another. The efficiency built into these shared systems allows a small group of library workers to describe and organize tens of thousands of resources each year.

Many elements of description are neutral. What year was a resource published? Is it a book, a map, a musical score? Does it contain papers presented at a conference? 

But other elements, especially terms used to describe the subject of a work, can be based on racist, sexist, or ableist worldviews. For many years, the Library of Congress Subject Headings term homosexuality had a "see also" reference: Homosexuality - see also Sexual perversion. Headings for women's participation in professions were phrased Women as engineers (or lawyers, artists, etc.), revealing an assumption that it was unusual for women to fill these roles. As Melissa Adler puts it, the Library of Congress Subject Headings are "an institutionalized expression of societal customs and beliefs." (1)

The authors of the Cataloguing Code of Ethics agree. “Cataloguing standards and practices are currently and historically characterised by racism, white supremacy, colonialism, othering, and oppression.” (2) The MSU Libraries and many others (3) recognize that, far from being neutral and universal, some elements of resource description have always been problematic, offensive, and harmful. They are based in a nineteenth-century Eurocentric philosophy of information organization and management, and they have actively marginalized, demeaned, and erased groups outside the dominant culture.

 

What are you doing to fix it?

In the field of cultural heritage, and locally at MSU Libraries, we are making efforts to identify and change harmful language. We acknowledge the power of language in our systems and standards, our position of power, our tacit involvement in reproducing oppressive structures, and our responsibility to effect change in our daily work.

We do not have the resources to entirely depart from shared description standards. Currently, we are able to obtain catalog records from shared databases for about 85% of the materials we add to the collection -- meaning that without these shared databases, our existing staff could only catalog about 15% of the library's acquisitions each year, and the uncataloged resources would be inaccessible. But while we employ these shared resources, we also commit to being more active in limiting their harm and changing them from within, and to do so with more cultural competency and urgency. We are supported in this work by the MSU Libraries' Strategic Plan, which emphasizes considering the impact of our work on creators, researchers, and communities and the power we have as creators of description.

Furthermore, we are also inspired by national discussions around racial and cultural justice to closely examine our descriptive practices and address inequities as the implications for these discussions on the descriptive work of libraries and archives are increasingly clear. We acknowledge that this work is made possible by the efforts of many others who have led the way, both in civil rights movements and in the cultural heritage field.

We are committed to transparency in our processes as we undertake this work, and we welcome critiques, concerns, questions, and input from our users. Please see the Projects tab of this guide to learn about our past, present, and future work. Please use our feedback form if you encounter problematic language or have input for us.

While much of this guide is concerned with descriptive practices in library catalogs, considerable work is also being done on descriptive practices for archival collections. A good example of this work is Anti-Racist Description Resources (4), compiled by the Archive for Black Lives in Philadelphia.

 

As part of this commitment, we offer the following resolution:

WHEREAS: Language, description, and knowledge hold meaning and power;

WHEREAS: Library description systems and structures are not universal or neutral and contain the inherent biases of their creators who operate from places of privilege and power;

WHEREAS: Structures that are intended to facilitate the discovery of resources in the MSU Libraries (subject or genre terms) may carry connotations that are demeaning, marginalizing, offensive, or harmful to underrepresented groups or individuals within these systems;

WHEREAS: Higher education and its libraries, archives, and other cultural heritage institutions have upheld these structures and terms in the description and organization of library resources, both historically and presently; and the work of providing access to and facilitating discovery of millions of existing resources in these institutions is made possible through historic and continued usage of this data and reliance on
national knowledge organization systems;

WHEREAS: We are supported by the Libraries' Strategic Plan, which emphasizes considering the impact of our work on creators, researchers, and communities, and acknowledging the power we have as creators of description;

MSU LIBRARIES THEREFORE RESOLVES:

TO: Recognize our own position of power and tacit involvement in reproducing oppressive structures and our responsibility to effect change through our daily work;

TO: Educate ourselves on our own biases in approaching library resource description and management;

TO: Call out and work against biases in our local application of national standards and descriptions that fortify the Eurocentric philosophies that often reinforce and uphold white supremacy, sexism, ableism, the settler-colonizer narrative, discrimination against the LGBTQIA+ community, and other forms of exclusion;

TO: Work to identify, change, and/or eradicate harmful language used in our local catalog descriptions. And to consult communities in the description of themselves and their created resources where appropriate and possible;

TO: Advocate for and actively pursue, through official channels, changes in the national standards and knowledge organization systems where we have identified harmful, oppressive, or marginalizing language and/or assumptions;

TO: Commit to transparency in our processes as we undertake this work and we welcome critiques, concerns, questions, and input from our users. Please use our feedback form.

 

(1) Adler, Melissa. "Paraphilias: The Perversion of Meaning in the Library of Congress Subject Headings." 2nd ASIS SIG/CR Classification Research Workshop, 1-20, 2011. doi:10.7152/acro.v22i1.12517

(2) Cataloguing Code of Ethics. Cataloguing Code of Ethics Steering Committee, 2021.

(3) For a list of other libraries involved in this work, see the Cataloging Lab List of Statements on bias in Library and Archives Description.

(4) Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia’s Anti-Racist Description Resources