Reading or Video 

Imagining: Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies / Marisa Elena Duarte and Miranda Belarde-Lewis

 

For at least half a century, catalogers have struggled with how to catalog and classify Native American and Indigenous peoples materials in library, archive, and museum collections. Understanding how colonialism works can help those in the field of knowledge organization appreciate the power dynamics embedded in the marginalization of Native American and Indigenous peoples materials through standardization, misnaming, and other practices. The decolonizing methodology of imagining provides one way that knowledge organization practitioners and theorists can acknowledge and discern the possibilities of Indigenous community-based approaches to the development of alternative information structures.

Duarte, Marisa Elena, and Miranda Belarde-Lewis. 2015. “Imagining: Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 53 (5–6): 677–702. http://digitalrhetoricandnetworkedcomposition.web.unc.edu/files/2016/01/duarte-and-belarde-creating-spaces-for-indigenous.pdf.
Reading or Video 

Prototype Theory: An Alternative Concept Theory for Categorizing Sex and Gender? / Melodie J. Fox

 

This article explores prototype theory as an alternative to classical theories of classification. This article points to other, more fine-grained methods for classification than traditional systems with rigid boundaries and hierarchies. While this article does not delve into the technical systems needed to implement prototype theory, it is a very useful foundation for discussions on how such a technical system could be designed.

“Classical theories of classification and concepts, originating in ancient Greek logic, have been criticized by classificationists, feminists, and scholars of marginalized groups because of the rigidity of conceptual boundaries and hierarchical structure. Despite this criticism, the principles of classical theory still underlie major library classification schemes. Rosch’s prototype theory, originating from cognitive psychology, uses Wittgenstein’s “family resemblance” as a basis for conceptual definition. Rather than requiring all necessary and sufficient conditions, prototype theory requires possession of some but not all common qualities for membership in a category. This paper explores prototype theory to determine whether it captures the fluidity of gender to avoid essentialism and accommodate transgender and queer identities. Ultimately, prototype theory constitutes a desirable conceptual framework for gender because it permits commonality without essentialism, difference without eliminating similarity. However, the instability of prototypical definitions would be difficult to implement in a practical environment and could still be manipulated to subordinate. Therefore, at best, prototype theory could complement more stable concept theories by incorporating contextual difference.”

Fox, Melodie J. 2011. “Prototype Theory: An Alternative Concept Theory for Categorizing Sex and Gender?” NASKO 3 (1): 151–59. https://doi.org/10.7152/nasko.v3i1.12799.
Community of Practice, Model Project 

Cataloging Lab – experiment with controlled vocabularies

 

This working group is focused on discussing new Library of Congress Subject Headings in a collaborative platform. Cataloging Lab provides a space for catalogers and other interested folks to discuss and navigate the complex process of proposing new subject headings, and tracking proposed changes already in progress.

Fox, V. (2018). Cataloging Lab – experiment with controlled vocabularies.

Community of Practice, Model Project, Reading or Video 

Zine Librarians Code of Ethics Zine

 

Created by librarians and archivists with a history of handling, cataloging, and preserving zines in an effort to help other do the same. Serves as a guide and a platform to discuss this relatively new form of media very often created by historically silenced groups, and how libraries and archives can form more ethical partnerships with zine creators.

“This document emerges from years of challenging and joyous conversations about the work we do with zines. As caretakers of these materials, in our roles as librarians and archivists —independent, public and academic alike—we believe in a set of core values that inform and guide our work. We disseminate those values here in order to communicate openly and build trust.”

Berthoud, Heidy, Joshua Barton, Jeremy Brett, Lisa Darms, Violet Fox, Jenna Freedman, Jennifer LaSuprema Hecker, et al. 2015. “Zine Librarians Code of Ethics Zine.” ZineLibraries.Info. 2015. http://zinelibraries.info/code-of-ethics/.
Reading or Video 

The (De-)Universalization of the United States: Inscribing Maori History in the Library of Congress Classification

 

This chapter demonstrates how the University of Waikato in New Zealand adapted a global standard (the Library of Congress Classification) for local use by inscribing topics related to and about Māori history and people.

The University of Waikato’s classification simultaneously uses and implicitly critiques a universal system written from a U.S. vantage point. It seems to acknowledge the benefits and necessities of using a globally recognized standard, as well as a need to inscribe local, anticolonial perspectives into that system.

Adler, Melissa. 2017. “The (De-)Universalization of the United States: Inscribing Maori History in the Library of Congress Classification.” In The Organization of Knowledge, 12:33–50. Studies in Information 12. Emerald Publishing Limited. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2055-537720170000011009.
Case Study 

Digitizing and Enhancing Description Across Collections to Make African American Materials More Discoverable on Umbra Search African American History / Dorothy Berry

 

This case study describes a project undertaken at the University of Minnesota Libraries to digitize materials related to African American materials across the Universities holdings, and to highlight materials that are otherwise undiscoverable in existing archival collections. It explores how historical and current archival practices marginalize material relevant to African American history and culture, and how a mass digitization process can attempt to highlight and re-aggregate those materials. The details of the aggregation process — e.g. the need to use standardized vocabularies to increase aggregation even when those standardized vocabularies privilege majority representation — also reveal important issues in mass digitization and aggregation projects involving the history of marginalized groups.

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Case Study 

Representing Normal: The Problem of the Unmarked in Library Organization Systems / Emily Drabinski

 

This case study analyzes the status of marked and unmarked binaries related to social identities in Library of Congress Subject Headings. The problem of bias in library classification and cataloging structures has been well documented and analyzed. Efforts to intervene in these systems have largely taken the form of advocating for different language or additional terms to name and reflect difference — e.g., the subject term “Gender non-conforming.” However, naming difference both makes assumptions about and further reinforces what is invisible and dominant — there is no subject heading for “Gender conforming.” Digital information organization that focuses on full and fair representation of non-dominant identities and works also leaves the non-dominant un-named and therefore uninterrogated.

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Case Study 

Terp Talks: Designing a Schema to Describe Interpretive Sign Language Videos / Sarah Sweeney

 

This case study describes the development of a custom metadata schema to support the description of 65 educational videos used to help teach sign language. The creators of this special collection had specific access and discovery needs that were not served by standard vocabularies, and the custom schema developed methods to describe information like the pace of the interpreter’s fingerspelling, the language being signed, and how space is being used by the interpreter.

(more…)

Reading or Video 

Imagining: Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies

 

For at least half a century, catalogers have struggled with how to catalog and classify Native American and Indigenous peoples materials in library, archive, and museum collections. Understanding how colonialism works can help those in the field of knowledge organization appreciate the power dynamics embedded in the marginalization of Native American and Indigenous peoples materials through standardization, misnaming, and other practices. The decolonizing methodology of imagining provides one way that knowledge organization practitioners and theorists can acknowledge and discern the possibilities of Indigenous community-based approaches to the development of alternative information structures.

Duarte, M. E., & Belarde-Lewis, M. (2015). “Imagining: Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 53(5–6), 677–702.

Reading or Video 

Affective Presence: The Metonymical Catalogue / Cara Krmpotich and Alexander Somerville

 

Drawing on exploratory research of online ethnographic records for particular types of Aboriginal bags in North America, we confront the absence of affective knowledge in museum catalogues and documentation. Although curatorial, ethnographic, and Aboriginal understandings of these items teem with affect, we find affect to be almost wholly lacking from available online records. We ask what the effects of this absence are for descendent Aboriginal communities, for museum publics, and for affect theory. We also look at an example where affect has a presence in online records, the Glenbow Museum, and consider the ways this creates opportunities for comparative and historic affective study.

Krmpotich, Cara, and Alexander Somerville. 2016. “Affective Presence: The Metonymical Catalogue.” Museum Anthropology 39 (2): 178–91. https://doi.org/10.1111/muan.12123.