Day One of the GLBT ALMS conference at the CUNY Grad Center. (ALMS stands for Archives, Libraries, Museums, and Special Collections, btw.)
I arrived at the conference in time to attend my friend Emily Drabinski's panel on Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). The first part of it was from professor Pat Lawton and now MLS grad Sara Turkovich from the University of Pittsburgh. Now that I'm looking through my notes, I'm not entirely confident in what I heard and noted. The research concept was very interesting, but I'm not sure that the results and interpretation were entirely reliable. Unfortunately.
- Turkovich, now in law school, wanted to know if LCSH affect (are affected by?) legal precedents
- Mentioned Greenblatt, Ellen. “Homosexuality: The Evolution of a Concept in the Library of Congress Subject Headings.” In Gay and Lesbian Library Service, edited by Cal Gough and Ellen Greenblatt, 75-101. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 1990.
- Turkovich searched several editions of the LCSH red books to trace the evolution of headings pertaining to homosexuality.
- In 1943 there were three terms: HERMAPHRODITISM, SEX CRIMES, and SEXUAL PERVERSION
- In 1948 they added HOMOSEXUALITY, SODOMY, and TRANSVESTISM
- She couldn't get ahold of the 1956 edition
- I guess I stopped noting the changes per edition at this point. That reminds me that other than my own, I didn't hear reference to a single talk being posted on line all weekend. Archivists!
- A guy who kept interrupting this workshop and the next one (so annoying) repeatedly battered the speakers with his cataloging expertise, which got me to thinking again about something that's been on my mind since the LCSH blog-a-thon, and that is balancing the cataloger vs. reference librarian's perspective, which is sort of an internal expression of the question of making things easy for the user vs. dumbing them down so much that they're not useful to the experts. More on this soon in a separate post.
- There is a HETEROSEXUAL MOTHERS term. It is for materials that compare queer and straight moms.
- Turkovich identifies 656 queer terms now--plenty, but not necessarily as good as they could be.
- I loved the idea of using LCSH as a primary source for viewing the development of attitudes toward homosexuality (or anything)
Next up was Emily, who was all kinds of nervous, totally without warrant. Her talk about teaching LCSH for queer research was smart and provocative and funny.
- She began by quoting Sanford Berman's 1971 Prejudices and antipathies: a tract on the LC subject heads concerning people.. Turkovich hadn't mentioned Sandy at all, which annoying guy pointed out.
- Emily is looking to break away from traditional catalog search and teaching methods to find ways to "use the catalog queer" since going at it the usual way (keyword search-->find appropriate book-->identify apt SHes) doesn't necessarily work with queer topics.
- There wasn't a particular solution offered for this research question, but it did get me to thinking about even more ways that the catalog is broken. (btw I started reading Radical Cataloging, which I got from editor KR Roberto at the conference, and I'll post about that in a bit, too. I bring this up because something that came up for me in the very first article is that despite the "my OPAC sucks" meme in library blogland, I don't think people are saying catalogs suck because of the content. They suck because of the proprietary software and unresponsive vendors. So why is it that libraries want to fuck up cataloging by further deprofessionalizing it, rather than forcing vendors to provide a better product?
Just so's you know, I'm going to make a post for each workshop I attended, rather than one superlong post about the whole event.
Comments
laura (not verified)
Mon, 05/12/2008 - 5:37pm
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Well, I would say that in
Well, I would say that in some instances catalogs also suck because of the content, or because of the way the content is displayed. Christopher Harris has made a point of saying that the goal of the catalog should not be to connect users to MARC records. That doesn't mean trash the MARC records; it just means that some of the information in them is not probably what people are looking for, and we should try to have catalogs that have more of what people are looking for (which could well include more subject headings).
I'd like to force vendors to provide a better product, but really I'd rather say the hell with the vendors, let's make our own product. Oh well. It's nice to dream.
jenna
Wed, 05/14/2008 - 5:49pm
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Thanks, Laura. I have to
Thanks, Laura. I have to mull some of that over some more. I tend to still feel like traditional cataloging is essential, though I also feel like it needs to be more responsive, and that vendors must be overthrown and the system rebuilt. I think we need controlled vocab (though a little less strictly controlled, if you know what I mean) and folksonomies and the like.
Emily (not verified)
Tue, 05/13/2008 - 9:36am
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Thanks so much for coming
Thanks so much for coming Jenna, and for being a kind face in the face of my anxiety. I am hoping I'll be increasingly able to keep that stuff under control. But people! In a room! Looking at me! Gah!
That said, I'll confess to not being much of an 'answer' person. I would love to open up a conversation about instruction techniques that move beyond "make 'em laugh!" and "engage 'em!" In fact, I'd just like to talk to some radical instruction librarians about what kinds of teaching strategies they're using now. I feel like the ACRL focus on teaching to standards is off-putting, but I really don't know where else to look.
i look forward to the rest of your conference breakdown!
K.R. (not verified)
Tue, 05/13/2008 - 5:37pm
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I am also interested in
I am also interested in hearing the rest of your conference breakdown. Please be gentle when you discuss my part of the panel. I am hypersensitive these days.
Fun facts about Heterosexual mothers: it appears to have been submitted by the University of Oregon. And here's the scope note: Here are entered works on mothers that emphasize their heterosexuality, usually in contrast to lesbians as mothers. General works on mothers without regard to their sexuality are entered under Mothers. It was coined for a 1995 work called Comparison of the self-concept of children of single heterosexual and lesbian mothers.
P.S. I know the name/backstory of annoying guy, but maybe you don't want it posted here. Lemme know.
jenna
Tue, 05/13/2008 - 6:16pm
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I'll try to get to the rest
I'll try to get to the rest of it ASAP. Thanks for caring. And I will try not to be nasty about how much I liked your panel, including your presentation, but since I did enjoy it, that should be easy enough.
Thanks for the het moms scoop.
Dish away on annoying guy, and also on Susan Stryker's annoying guy, if you're so inclined. Just because I'm trying to be careful about who I publicly trash on my blog doesn't mean you have to. I did see him in the index of your book, btw, but I say expertise is not an excuse for dominating and derailing someone else's presentations.