Maggie McGee: cloud, you can begin.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Great thanks.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Okay, thanks everybody for coming this presentation.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): is about.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): we're going to be talking about the the process, I went through to design a research guide for faculty about finding diverse voices in the library catalog.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And in how the implicit bias in our systems became apparent to me, as I was doing this.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And then Maggie is going to talk a little bit about some of the initiatives that she's taken in the network zone and then i'd like to open it up for discussion, because I identified that there's implicit bias, but.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): I have a strong background in cataloguing, for I started out as a catalog or decades ago but but it's been literally decades since i've actually cataloged a book, from start to finish.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And I know it's complex but I don't know how to fix it so i'm hoping we can get everybody to weigh in.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): So i'm just putting my link to my research guide in the chat if you haven't taken a look at it, yet you're welcome to whoops.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): That.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): So you're welcome to take a look at that as i'm as i'm talking so this research guy was developed, I was approached in.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): July of this year to do a presentation for faculty it was the diversity attribute review committee and that's the committee that is helping faculty design courses that get the diversity attributes in the catalog.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): and, specifically, they were looking for a session on using the library to find content on diversity and or finding content authored by people from marginalized communities.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And so I agreed to do that just sure that's probably not hard to do right.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): In the summer of 2020 the Librarians and I created a curated an e book collection on diversity and social issues, and that was a as a response to.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): The black lives matter movement and George floyd and a lot of the struggles our campus was having with.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Racism and other bias situations.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And one big component of that collection was looking for voices of people who had been discriminated against and we found I found that, as we were doing that.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): This was a strictly an e book collection, because we were our clutches were closed, and it was the summer.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): and
Marianne Hebert (she/her): You know code was happening and we were all still online so.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): We were using the Cisco interface to get Cisco ebooks.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And it was hard to find them, and so I ended up you know doing a lot of research and trying to find those voices and I really struggled to do that and so some of these things i'm presenting data, some of the things I landed on as I was doing that.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): So, as I was building this this some live guide I struggled a lot with the language that I was using and trying to find the language that was considered to be appropriate, by all the different groups, I was trying to help.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Present and so these are some of the resources that I found helpful, as I was doing that.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): If you have other examples that you like to use please throw them up in the chat i'm going to be asking throughout this.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Whole session to add some of your favorite and your least favorite things in the chat So the idea is i'll compile them at the end of the session and distribute them when we distribute the recording and the PowerPoint.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): But I found that, as I was searching for things and I was using the Internet, as well as a catalog to find ways to find those voices I was stumbling.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): On a lot of research being done by Librarians about bias in the catalog bias in the subject headings bias in the.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): classification systems that we use and I I kind of had always known about the bias, because we kind of learned about it in library school a couple of decades ago.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): i'm sure you all have to, but I I came at it with a with a new lens and part of that had been from working on that diversity collection working.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): We i've lived guide for black lives matter, and I also worked with a focus on campus to do a research guide on trauma informed teaching, it was from that lens that I began to understand that.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): The language that we use matters and it, it can be triggering when we use the wrong language.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And so I had this Aha moment of when I looked at, you know, I think that the illegal aliens example is really you know it's just that's just a strange heading, why would we that's just so insulting right and so.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): So, so I decided, as I was building this research guide on how to find the voices, I would also incorporate why the catalog is so bad, we actually have in our library strategic plan.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): portion about the catalyze the colonizing the library and I thought well this kind of fits in with that we really need to look hard at our structures and see if there's ways to overcome them.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): So.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): As we're searching for historically marginalized voices.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): The author and headings author names do not include information such as an ethnicity, race or gender, they do occasionally include.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): occupations, but usually there's birthday it's not always death dates.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Generally, the library Congress subject headings assigned to works don't always indicate the off voice of the author author if there's a memoir or an autobiography.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): library Congress will assign the substituting for biography and then of course primary sources personal narratives and correspondence work pretty well.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): But if an author is just discussing racism or social justice issue from their lived experience they don't get anything in their subject headings.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Other metadata, such as the title and contents notes or or summaries might hint at the voice of the author, but it doesn't make it easy to search and find these things you kind of have to know they exist first.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): So here's an example of a record make change how to fight and justice by.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): I can't see what the Shaun king, he is a biracial author who's actually active in the black lives matter movement, so this record doesn't really have any library Congress subject headings that indicate anything about his perspective or his voice.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): The contents node as a black it says he's a leader of the black lives matter movement.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And then there's.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): I don't know how to pronounce it be sacked BA BA the 750 biography and autobiography i'm not familiar with that subject skiing sometimes those show up in records and so, if you do a search on autobiography you might get some stuff, but I find that to be very inconsistent.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And here's one.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): By a black British woman author and again the subject headings don't indicate anything about her voice the subject that the title sort of suggests, it may be, and then the the.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): summary note suggests that this would be a good book to read, if you were interested about hearing the perspective of people of color in Britain today, but again there's no the metadata doesn't help you find this you kind of have to stumble upon this.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And here's a similar book by a by a white author and there's nothing in here to indicate, you know the voice of the author and so.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Considering, you know the types of books, we have in our libraries, you know just searching on race and racism and equality will get you lots of stuff but not necessarily information about the the people writing the books.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): here's one about from native American authors who this book, if you read the.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): The see it's it's not in the introduction it's in the.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): author's note that they talk about their experiences, about being native and and what that how how to present history in that perspective and so there's nothing in this record that that indicates their perspective.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): I won't talk, talk to right now about Indians of North America, which is also problematic and then this is a book by Charles Eastman, and this was published in 2011 and there's several manifestations of this work and the metadata is very inconsistent when you look at it, but again.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): This is a native American explaining about an Indian spirituality and there's nothing in the metadata to tell you that this is that that native American voice.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And there's also I should mention that there's a lot of controversy about the using the term it up mythology to describe other other religious beliefs, other than Christianity.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): So this is the whoops, this is the live guide.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): This is where I landed and i'm actually editing it every day, as we go along and just see what happens when I click there, you can see that so i'll just do a brief.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): outline and you're welcome to explore the first the first page is all about the implicit bias and the structures and some of the subject headings that are most problematic.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): That came to the forefront as I was doing my research and also some of the classification schedules that are particularly.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): problematic and also, I also sort of covered a little bit about how our metadata comes at us and why it's not eat by I just can't go in and fix it myself.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): I didn't put in here that I don't know how but I actually don't know how, in this networked environment, so I won't even go down that wormhole.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And then the little bit about metadata the progress that we're making in libraries and some of the the change the subject project and what the Sunni.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Libre consortium did, for us, and then the bottom has some of my bibliography sources so if you're interested in some of what I read to get here that's a place, you can go and then these tabs on the.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): side are the actual strategies for finding the diverse voices and, in general I walk folks through the process of you know how to find a known author, you know how to do an author search how to do a subject search and white subject searching is better than keyword searching finding.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Those diverse voices and finding the class of people or the ethnic groups that they're looking for.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Also, how to find them biology's which is not very easy to find, for some reason I wish they would use subject subject headings for anthologies more.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): How browsing can really be useful.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): I personally don't use a lot of reader advisories but and book recommender sites, but some of those can be useful.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And book awards and then using the just the Internet to find stuff and then we have films on demand, which is a great place if you're looking you know what.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): What does this author say you can actually sometimes find them talking and that's a great way to find those voices and then under each of topical area.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): I I went into more depth about each some of those specific.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): techniques that I would use so here's one on on how to do the.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): find the subject headings i've actually linked to lc sh because we don't have authorities turned on in our Primo.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): So in here, you can actually get the scope notes, which can sometimes be useful, sometimes I don't know what lc means.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): When they when they when they say something so I linked to llc and then I also linked to our catalog to show you how things might work there, and it should be persistent so there's they can get some documents.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Again, finding specific videos and finding specific Internet resources using hashtags.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And then journals I was hoping, so this this presentation was supposed to happen in August and it didn't happen in August.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): They decided to postpone it our faculty are kind of strung out and i'm sure they're like that, on every campus and Sunni.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): They were going to do it this fall sometime we have not rescheduled we're probably not going to reschedule it before I retire.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): But I was actually hoping to get some feedback, then, particularly for faculty who are working in some of these areas, what are their favorite journals and what are their favorite sources that I could add to this.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): So if you have any favorite sources specifically favorite journals that help to amplify some of those diverse voices that would be useful.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Specific book words and then I pull out some examples from our our book catalog to show them, this is the type of thing that we have.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And i'm just going to check the chat to see if there's anybody adding anything in there, feel free to add stuff to the chat so that is basically how that lip guide works i'm.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Part of the organization of it, so the tabs are listed according to the strength of our collection, so we have the most on racism and.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): ethnic groups and we're we do pretty good with LGBT Q I questions and we have very little on poor voices like if you're really destitute, what are what a will have those people think and feel.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): I did I did find that we do have some microfilm from the turn of the century, for some of the Irish immigrants, but not a lot on contemporary poor voices.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): So I didn't make sure that when I linked to things that.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): That the library Congress subject headings that I linked to and the Primo searches that I did would actually give good results.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): So there are other library Congress subject headings that seemed to be attractive, but we actually didn't have anything on them, so I made sure not to include them because I didn't want to frustrate people.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And so, overall, I found that there are no one easy way to find these diverse voices a little bit of subject headings works, sometimes biographies sometimes the primary sources keyword searching sort of work, some of the time.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): The Internet works pretty good good some of the time, but i'm going to recommend her sites like them a little bit and not so great anthologies are a great place if you can find them and and again those journals that amplify the underrepresented voices.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): So I actually use if you're looking to build your collection, if you look at your collections, I mean we're missing some voices any of these strategies can help you identify you know things to purchase to add to your collections.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): I actually use Amazon quite a bit i'm not a fan of Amazon, I should say that up front, I don't order from them i'm that's a personal a personal choice, but I do use them.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): When i'm doing my book selection for the library and I typically read book reviews in the morning, while i'm doing my coffee thing, and when I see a good book or a book review that seems pretty plausible i'll throw it into my Amazon list.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And so, while i'm searching Amazon is there's if I look at the book they're almost always they suggest something else right.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): But I also find really useful that when I put things in my Amazon shopping list they'll send me emails pretty much the same day you like this, so we're going to suggest this, so I would never put this on my page but that's a that's often a good place to find.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): recommendations.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): The other strategy I like to do is do a browser search on.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): foo fan, if you just type a topic and live guide what you're going to get if you'd like and I gave some examples economic disparity and live guide and diverse voices and live by you're going to.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): you're going to get some reading lists vetted by academic Librarians that are a good place to start.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): So I use that quite a bit when i'm doing searches and I didn't put that in my lip guides I didn't want to explain to the Faculty would live guide was and why to do that, but that I found that's a really good way to do things.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And then, while i'm reading the book review, I I always look to see who the book reviewer was and what did they write so here's an example of a book that was reviewed by Robert lovato and.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): When I looked up his book in Amazon it looked pretty good, so I throw it in my list, then when I go through my list at the point when I get some money to spend on both through my Amazon list and sort of.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): You know, pick and choose from there, and do, do the further further research to actually do the deep dive into the reviews to see whether we should purchase it or not, any questions so far feel free to unmute yourself and interrupt me.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): So, as I was going through this and learning about you know this past year is really became a we really became more aware of what systemic racism was all about and that.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): made me realize, as I was doing my research on the bias in the library catalog I started to you know, we know that the library Congress subject headings and classification system is designed for Congress and they tend to be.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): At least historically white men Christian and and pretty much you know well, connected economically and socially, but our academies are like that too.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): So the books that we buy are written by academics, who have been historically white male and Christian especially you know books, we purchased you know you know 50 years ago.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): So the voices of marginalized people are less well represented because they haven't been included in the cat Academy, and so our structures put sort of perpetuate that worldview.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): um so one of the things i'd like to point out is that there are subject headings that help us get to these classes of people African American authors gay authors, you know they really help us to find some of those memoirs and autobiographies, but when you start to categorize the.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): People into those diverse categories is also problematic because when it's not always easy to determine an author's how they self identify and sometimes their identity city could be very complex and not easily.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): stuck into terms and sometimes they're fluid right and and sometimes i'm the others prefer not to be class depart from what they don't really want their identity to be to thing that distinguishes them from their good writing.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And at the point you start doing the diversity attributes you're automatically assuming that they're not part of the norm and it reinforces the awareness and it reaffirms the bias in our system so it's a catch 22.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): You know, to to do that we need, we want to do that, and because our users, want to find those those those titles, but it also, I think, until we can fix society as a whole it's it is always going to be a problem.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): um so here's some problematic lc sh I included some in my lip guide, these are different ones um you know rich people compared with the poor who are not necessarily people prostitutes are assumed to be female um so compared to male prostitutes and.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): So these are ones that other people, a lot of these i've gleaned from trolling I think that the cataloging lab is a great place to look for.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Some of these these problematic headings primitive societies is problematic because it kind of assumes that you know if you're not if you're not from a non industrial society that you're not literate that your social structure is not complex that you don't have.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Complex knowledge systems.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And again invalids versus that people first.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): structure, I would expect that llc is working to fix that and then the oriental literature, a lot of people consider oriental to be a racist term.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Do you have any other lc subject headings that you think are problematic, you can add them to the chat now that would be a good thing to do and i'd be really curious if anybody hasn't experienced working with Nicole, how to go about changing lcs h.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Anybody want to chime in here.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): So um you know I always just assumed, you know my whole career that.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): llc was in movable that we didn't have a voice, and I think we do now.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And so, here are some additional problematic library Congress classification systems on, in addition to the ones I wanted my lip guide.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): The Non Western languages, I actually had to look up yes in sanford biermann I remember reading him 30 or so years ago.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): So so romance languages and English language they get their own classification area, but then they're kind of lumping.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Other other languages together, I had to look up hyper boria which is.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Arctic Asian in North American languages, along with Indian and artificial languages, I thought that was kind of a weird combination.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): African American history is one separately from the rest of American history.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Thanks Maggie put a an faq on seiko proposals.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And then threatened societies again here there classing ethnography fees with non literate people of the world and Western encroachment and I saw this on a Facebook posting.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And somebody sort of pointed out, what about Eastern encroachments you know happening in East Asia and other places I there isn't a separate classification for that so.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Those are some of the llc.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): problems.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): So um and then I was then I kind of got stuck because you know, one of the first things we need to do is acknowledge that there's a problem right and and explore some of the solutions.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): i'm.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Just checking my notes to make sure that i'm on target with some of my um.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): yeah so then to acknowledge that is that you know it's part of the systemic racism that with that that we see in our society.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): i'm not the only one who noticed this in fact you know I noticed what other people were saying.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): So there's lots of research being done lots of articles being done i've mentioned, I the bibliography it that's not all the articles ever written on this so there's plenty of people looking at this, I know llc is looking at this and trying to address it.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): there's different link vocabularies and I also noticed that in Canada has done a lot with the First Nations subject terms and specifically a lot archives, have been working hard on this, though I didn't see any link data schema that we could actually.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): cultivate easily.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And and just knowing that you know our language changes faster than the crowd control vocabulary so we're always going to catching up, but I think we have we can do a better job of what we're doing.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And so, then maggie's going to talk a little bit about some of her initiatives.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): i'm going to.
Maggie McGee: Maggie thanks, thank you, Marianne I really appreciate you doing presentation, a lot of valuable information that is.
Maggie McGee: You know we've seen some of the similar stuff with trying to identify things within the network itself.
Maggie McGee: So one of the biggest projects that we have undertaken so far in the network is the change of subject project which we implemented in August 2020 This is where we were able to identify.
Maggie McGee: Subject headings in our Meta data for physical records that contained subject headings with legal aliens are illegal aliens.
Maggie McGee: within it, and we're able to not only just change it in discovery created normals that change it upon process coming into our system so that it's, not even in the Meta data cannot be seen from.
Maggie McGee: Full record view or display and even for not just for end users in pre mopey but also for library staff that are looking at Meta data.
Maggie McGee: And I was just like a beginning, that SMS P really wants to move forward with improving and changing bias within our catalog by addressing different subject headings, and this is.
Maggie McGee: That was the beginning of it and we've been in talks since then to best figure out how to move forward what you know subject headings, do we first address, etc.
Maggie McGee: And then other things that we're working on is a statement, this is not just the sls it's the SMS P primarily I work with them so it's a joint effort.
Maggie McGee: Is a statement on the language of description that can be used throughout Sunni, so that we all have a very we have the same language of description.
Maggie McGee: Statement talking about implicit bias and how we are going about to address it, that we acknowledge that it exists and how we want to move forward and how people then can report to us subject headings.
Maggie McGee: And language that we can change because there's language within Meta data within the mark record.
Maggie McGee: We can't change, it may be in the notes and maybe in the 500 fields or someplace else that we don't necessarily have the ability to change because it is part of the actual.
Maggie McGee: Material itself, but with the subject headings, we can make these changes, so we want to have a place where people are able to do this.
Maggie McGee: And Marianne mentioned cataloging live, which is great, they have a list of statements on bias my brain archive descriptions and.
Maggie McGee: It is nice because you can see all the different libraries different statements that they have made and it's it's a good thing to us because it gives everybody an ability.
Maggie McGee: To you know see how other people are handling this what they're doing and there's quite a few and I guarantee this list is going to continue to grow, because I know a lot of different institutions are moving in this direction as well.
Maggie McGee: And then not only working on us language of description we're thinking about how we can.
Maggie McGee: improve.
Maggie McGee: authority files, whether it's subject headings, so that we can have our own repository so we can use language that's more inclusive and homeless or us as an amazing linked data vocabulary.
Maggie McGee: For the LGBT community and.
Maggie McGee: it's wonderful because you can just start seeing this sometimes already, possibly in in library, you know the connection client, you might be looking at mark records and come across a subject heading with subfield to of homo it.
Maggie McGee: And that's the designated for homeless or subject headings and it's a really nice repository and I really suggest you take you know get a chance, take a look at it.
Maggie McGee: Because what it says is that the vocabulary and i'm saying this is a quote is intended to function as a companion to broad subject term vocabularies, such as the library of Congress subject headings.
Maggie McGee: libraries, archives museums and other institutions are encouraged to use homeless source to support the LGBT Q research by enhancing the discover ability of their LGBT Q resources so it's really, really nice is that.
Maggie McGee: The SMS P we're exploring how to create a local authority record for the subject headings for homeless source.
Maggie McGee: That we can, whether we decide we're going to enhance the actual mark record and connection, or we want to just enhance it locally, we would be able to have this within Alma and be able to use them to create local subject headings.
Maggie McGee: So I think it's a really nice tool that we've it was wonderful I was in a session, and this is how it came up and we started discussing so that's what's great about having these web sessions, that we can share what other people have learned and it gets everybody else other ideas.
Maggie McGee: And then, by not finally but the last one i'm going to speak about is.
Maggie McGee: The SMS pete we are looking at how to do a di audit of our physical titles and then networks on a nice ease and as Marianne has.
Maggie McGee: eloquently stated it's not easy right there's a lot of complexity.
Maggie McGee: can't just rely on one thing, and you know subject headings only give you a piece of the information and authority files.
Maggie McGee: you'd have to go deep into authority files and authority files don't always have all the information about the authors that you could use as designated to try to refined your results so yes MSP we're.
Maggie McGee: Looking at how we could do this, can we do this at network level, and if it's not possible there because of the scope of the amount of records, we have there is it possible for the disease and, if so, how so it's there's a lot going on right now.
Maggie McGee: And within the SMS paid a very active group and very, very involved in trying to improve, but you know change bias within our catalog and improve discover ability for di collections so they've an amazing job very involved and, as things evolve and change will be doing more, so thank you.
Maggie McGee: And just to let you know I put in the chat the links that are available here on the slide.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): So um I would love it if folks had ideas or thoughts about any any of this it's very complicated.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Oh thanks holly.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Any any suggestions, please feel free to unmute yourself, especially like I said, I have a cataloging background, but I when I took a look at the.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): The change the heading, you know what was done there, I was just amazed at me just show you I took one look at this whole I don't know if everybody has seen as this is amazing.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): All the things that had to be done to fix things.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): It was just I just started going through it going oh my God, this is really complicated.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And then the you know the all the related headings, you know it's your your.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Your catalog is dynamic, so you can't just flip the headings right because the next time you buy a book they're not they're going to need to be flipped again so you need to set up systems that are.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Automatic and the reality is is you know we're we're lucky in a way that the because we're in a consortium, we have we we have a way to control this.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): In for 64 campuses, but this is a problem in every every little library everywhere and Librarians are struggling with how how when you're in a small shop and not part of a big thing, how can, how can you control these headings, and how can you fix them.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Any thoughts, please feel free to mute yourself if anybody has any questions.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): On this is Ellen mcgrath from university of buffalo.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): um yeah this this is totally complex.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): I sort of always been in the camp of let's change the heading through cycle, but you know it's now it's starting to be pointed out, more and more that.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): Depending on different classes or ethnicities perspective it varies so that's not even always a solution, you, you have to prefer one term and then have cross references to it.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): But I, for me, I think the I suspect and i'm not 100% sure that the the solution may lie with link data but i'm very.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): I guess disappointed and frustrated at the slowness of the development of linked data, especially in our local library system platforms like Alma.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): And then, on the other hand, to I.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): Some of this like when you were starting Mary and it occurred to me that.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): Some of the information you were saying there was lacking about the author that can be captured in the authority records for the author, with certain attributes, but on the other hand, we don't have the full integration of the.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): benefits of authority records within Alma and Primo so you know it's just complicated, unfortunately, but that's kind of where I go around in circles.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): I agree it is very circular and and I did find you know when when I was when I created the collection of diversity, issues that included those diverse voices my thought was originally you know I tried to make sure that I had a variety of voices LGBT.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Voices disability voices all different types of groups of people and I thought i'd make a bucket for African Americans a bucket for Chinese Americans and then I looked at about two books and I realized that.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): there's no way I can't tell by looking at this book and the you know the the metadata what book it this person should fit into right and I gave that up really, really quickly.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): I realized that would never work, and so I ended up using non fiction fiction memoirs we also have some self help self help books.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And just kind of generic things it doesn't really help people find those voices, but the the collection is small enough that you can browse pretty easily and it's not.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): That hard, but one of the things I realized that when I was trying to do that, and when I was reading about this is that you don't want to make assumptions about how people self identify right, and if you don't want to you know out somebody if they're.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): questioning their gender, you want to make sure that they get to decide what their gender identity is so.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): it's it's a it's a conundrum you know, and until there's a way for you know people to tell you it's really hard to figure that out.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): I did I did find.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): On can I get out of this.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): That there is an initiative.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): called the demographic group terms project I don't know if that's still think it started in 2013 and I checked our the coding in our records and we actually have a lot of this data coded in a lot of our records, so the question is, is there.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And I only checked a couple of records, so I don't know how comprehensive, it is or how well it was done but it's a way of coding.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): For those attributes in the record and then the, the other side of the coin is you know can all my do this and common Primo and I have no idea if it can so there, there are initiatives out there it's just like it's just going to take a long time, I think, before we actually see any progress.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): yeah, and I mean definitely the demographic group terms is is still ongoing it's it's one of the newer initiatives.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): But but there's always the problem of what we call our legacy data to you know we can.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): put it on newer records going forward from whatever your day zero is like today, but going back and trying to retrospectively assign these things, so you could do comprehensive gathering of these records is just overwhelming um yeah it's it's and and what you said about.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): sort of authors self identifying to I mean for a while, when when our da came about and we had this option of putting all these attributes in the authority records for authors.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): It was great, but then almost immediately, it was like well you don't want to call somebody you know female male you know gender specific because, again, it should be up to them, it should be fluid.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): So it's almost like what whatever you come up with, and the user wants comprehensiveness and everything together.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): But there's almost an argument against everything that well that's good from this side, but on the flip side that stereotyping, or you know labeling or pigeonholing people so it's a it's it's really tough.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Right and considering that there's a lot of authors and writers, who don't wanted their identity to be part of their professional portfolio and so yeah so the it's it's not an easy an easy fix but.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): I wish it were easier to find these voices and also mentioned, you know you know we have a product of process of you know, withdrawing books that.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): I had don't get used or they get warm we don't replace them when they disappear if they use wasn't warranted and sometimes you can't replace things but um.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): I would at this point when weeding take it take a different approach to how we we.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): making sure that we don't read those voices, even though they're not getting news because I I think there's going to be a.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): continuing trend of research in this area, you know, I think, I think, then the past year or so has brought in an awareness and we're seeing more research, not just buys in the catalog but bias in society right and there's.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Hopefully, so just be mindful of what we need, or what we don't replace.
Maggie McGee: holly had a question Marion.
Maggie McGee: sure she said so many of our students do free text search searching advice for them or us as we teach them other than uses subject headings.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): yeah you know I actually found you know, and you know when when Esther got.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Left Potsdam and went to work for as well as we didn't replace our electronic resources librarian and that would be our Primo person, so I look at you know we don't have anybody fixing Primo since she's left.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And I actually look, you know, sometimes I look at my results when I search in our catalog with subject headings and i'm getting different things, and I do know that I can take a look, I can't always see the metadata that tells me why I got this result.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Because there's other subject headings right there's other schema being pulled in, and then the Cross reference structures behind the three records that you can't see are doing things so you know, I think, because.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): One of the things that when i'm working with students and we're teaching them how to do research as to before they even begin do some brainstorming for synonyms and like words and and then as they're searching.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): to notice the metadata and the words, not just in the catalog but you know the words and the records that they're finding online, no matter where is.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Is start writing down all the variety of words that they see don't don't just assume you know one one word and then you know just compile a list of like.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): One of those cloud things and just search them all.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): In the question is, you know is how much information do they need to they need a comprehensive search, you know a lot of our students just need I mean three articles and they're happy and they just go away so.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): I call it, following the metadata and I do that when i'm buying books to like if i'm buying a book on you know somebody mentioned Eskimos here in with people i'll see.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Do we have books on this topic, what are the subject headings, how much do they circulate, is it an area that we need to beef up our collection and so just.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): I mean it's so hard that you know I don't I haven't seen any systems that do a really great job of suggesting you type this do you also want this.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): anybody else have some insights there.
Maggie McGee: I would like to address some of your weird results that you're like I don't know where they're coming from.
Maggie McGee: So the way promos designed it doesn't just do the subject headings that are in the record Meta data.
Maggie McGee: It will go down into the authority files of the subject headings, so if something has been added to that subject heading 30 file, it may have a result that you're not expecting to show up.
Maggie McGee: In your premier results so just be aware that sometimes that's happening if you're getting results, this is.
Maggie McGee: And then we don't have any control over Meta data coming from the CDI as well.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): yeah I find that.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): The the visibility of the seed CDI data.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): very annoying.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): So so Maggie will we ever get our authorities to display in Primo so that we can see the records and in the suggested, you know you know See also headings.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): If anybody is really, really old here, if you remember multi list used to do this for us, that was a long time ago that was, like many, many manifestations ago, but that was actually really helpful and we've really lost.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): authority control and the usefulness for 30 control with our more recent systems.
Maggie McGee: Oh i'll take a look into that I do know that you know if it's in an authority file you'll get.
Maggie McGee: You know the ultra like you know Mark Twain you'll get you know because other the other names, but you know you won't get that.
Maggie McGee: If it's not in the authority file and Primo currently, but I can look into see if we can use our authority files.
Maggie McGee: As a See also I remember looking into this I can't remember if that's a possibility or not it's kind of like 30 files or an all or nothing either on or off, so I would have to investigate a little further and let you know.
Okay.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Any other comments or suggestions.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): hints.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): frustrations.
Lauren Jackson-Beck (she/her) SUNY Potsdam: Marianne.
Lauren Jackson-Beck (she/her) SUNY Potsdam: Jennifer smothers how to add an interesting comment.
Lauren Jackson-Beck (she/her) SUNY Potsdam: That.
Lauren Jackson-Beck (she/her) SUNY Potsdam: When collecting only written materials, there are many cultures that have strong world storytelling traditions and then, if we're not collecting that, then that is a form of structural racism in and of itself and so.
Lauren Jackson-Beck (she/her) SUNY Potsdam: You know I know a lot of times that the stories the oral storytelling are sometimes translated into into written written stories but.
Lauren Jackson-Beck (she/her) SUNY Potsdam: Not not always and so you know, there are a lot of materials that we are just not.
Lauren Jackson-Beck (she/her) SUNY Potsdam: Not not not able to gather because of the scope of what we do and what we're leaving out.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): There is a pretty big omission i've also heard that argument for people who bash audio books is not being reading.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): i've seen that a lot on some of the Facebook groups I follow that if you're reading and if you're listening to an audiobook it's not as intellectual, perhaps as as actually reading the book it's kind of like cheating and then people have pointed out that well there's a lot of.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Cultures where the oral history is important in developing those listening skills are just as valid as learning the type of traditional literacy.
Maggie McGee: Jennifer just shared a link to.
Maggie McGee: Poor oral history from CNN you Christopher Newport.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): mm hmm are you, seeing that I just clicked on it.
Maggie McGee: Yes, thank you.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): yeah and also.
Maggie McGee: Like you said, the idea of audiobooks and we start going into being able list right there's all these things that we have to check our bias, when we do that.
Maggie McGee: Yes.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): I totally I totally agree with you.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): i'm sorry it's me again but um I know some libraries are actually sort of actively encouraging their community to report, you know problematic language they find in the catalog to them.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): But.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): And I you know maggie's done a wonderful job with the change the subject, but in some ways it's sort of like a slippery slope in my mind until we seem to have a better solution than just taking the.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): accepted controlled vocabulary and flipping in all sorts of less pejorative language but I don't know if any.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): Libraries represented here have considered doing that you know, asking them what, what do you see as a problem of course it's not always good to ask people about problems, unless you have potential solutions in my mind.
Maggie McGee: And when I don't mind if I get another people can join in, if I address this, so the SMS P, you know we've had a lot of discussion about this right, because we need to get stakeholder involvement, we need to know what the.
Maggie McGee: The language acceptable languages today right because you know we can make assumptions and think it's correct.
Maggie McGee: But we really need to get stakeholder buy in so you know that's why you know and again, not everything can or will be changed, but having a mechanism to at least report it and have their voice heard and.
Maggie McGee: Then we have the ability to address it and look at it and see how we could possibly handle it is definitely going to be a slow process it's not something that you know.
Maggie McGee: You know, we can just roll out the change subject project because other people had done so much work ahead of us.
Maggie McGee: We didn't have to do as much groundwork to figure out what subject headings would be better do that was already in place, so is a much.
Maggie McGee: more streamlined process less time consuming in getting stakeholder buy in because it was done.
Maggie McGee: We would need to make sure that we are getting stakeholder buy in that we're not you know, this is, again, we need to know what is really the language being used now.
Maggie McGee: To describe different people places and things so that we can reflect them as best you know, because we want to use vernacular that people are using you know because there's you all, we all know.
Maggie McGee: there's subject headings in there that we would never use those terms, otherwise, but as Librarians we get used to seeing especially catalog so there's a lot of that so it's definitely going to be something and that's what that statement description is going to.
Maggie McGee: Try to do is give us all.
Maggie McGee: an overarching policy, you know, a statement that we can all have in place and a centralized reporting mechanism.
Maggie McGee: that's the goal of it.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): yeah I mean that sounds great I you know I don't know if the SMS P, is to a point of actually.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): coming up with strategies to try to engage all those stakeholders or not, but.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): In some ways, you know i've expressed frustration about there not being a clear path, but on the other hand, I think all of these conversations.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): are valuable in and of themselves just you know, in terms of raising people's awareness so.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): In some ways, I think, maybe the engagement of the stakeholders on our various campuses could also just you know raise awareness get the conversation flowing I think if Congress hadn't you know turn down the changing of the illegal aliens and dei had become such a major.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): theme issue for everybody to deal with.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): It subject headings would never have been it this visible in my.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): yeah and I am i'd like to.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): reinforce the idea that having that feedback form, I attended a.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Working Group that was sponsored by Boston not Boston my brooklyn public library about some of these very issues and one of the things that came out of it was.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): You know I mean you look at all the work that went into changing the undocumented immigrants right, that was a lot of work for like one heading.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): But having that feedback form tells your your users that were listening, you know even then, even if it's not easy to fix it, you know it's hard to explain why it's not easy to fix.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And so you could easily do that on your website have a feedback form that people can fill in and saying you know I find these these words problematical.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Better to put it in in pre most somewhere and i'm not sure if there's an easy way to do that, like I said we don't have a Primo library, and right now.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): But the the other neat thing that I got from that that working group and listening to other library and struggling with these very issues.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): was one that that there is a lot of work happening at lc if even if we're not seeing about it.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): I think there's probably not that there's gag rules but they're probably they're not very open about their initiatives it's I know it's very complicated and we saw what happened when Congress intervene with changing that heading.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): But I did ask also because i've been referring to.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): marginalize people and marginalized populations and I kind of feel weird about that and.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): One library and suggested as long as you're referring to them so historically marginalized they know where they are, they know what you mean.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And as a society there are lots of people trying to fix that so it's a systemic social problem it's not just the library, so I would love to see us do a feedback form, even on our own website, if not, if we can't get it into Primo somewhere.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): And i'll just add in that.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): I think it was on a program for cooperative cataloguing session or something in the in the past couple months, where some high level people in the.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): library of Congress cataloging circles there they acknowledge their their really you know they know they have to look at the whole structure of the lcs ah and.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): The big things need to change and happens so that's that's encouraging, but it is a big long lasting structure and it's not going to happen overnight, obviously.
Maggie McGee: I guess the same thing for us, you know we'll make changes and the one thing is, even though the change of subject project was a lot of work.
Maggie McGee: The good thing the footprints already in place, adding and changing and the any other subject headings at this point.
Maggie McGee: it's i've already got it worked out, so it would be a much quicker again it's much quicker process the process that it's going to take time is you know.
Maggie McGee: One have we're having people report, or we proactively go out and we know there's some subject headings, we want to address and then getting stakeholder buy in because we want to make sure that we are really choosing appropriate subject headings moving forward as best as we can.
Maggie McGee: And i'll be happy when.
Maggie McGee: library Congress finally changes it unfortunately due to the language, saying that it, you know.
Maggie McGee: To get stakeholder buy in which they did, which is why it failed, and because the term legally has not been changed and legal circles, has caused the issues i'll be very happy.
Maggie McGee: When that gets changed in the you know legal terminology gets changed and we can no longer have to worry about flipping those terms.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): that's good to hear.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): yeah Jennifer mentioned the documentary.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): which I haven't actually watched yet i'm like too busy.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): yeah I mean, I wonder, in terms of engagement of stakeholders, if it would even be possible to do something like a and I think they have done this and various parts of the country.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): Like a joint viewing of the documentary and then you know discussion, but maybe and in a broader group than this excellent session is reaching just just a thought.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): yeah I agree it needs to be really big conversation when you have to you know figure out them the mechanisms that they know the technology that gets this done how to build the thesaurus.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): And how do you get past those conversations like when because there is not always agreement within different diverse communities about what the words should be used so.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): You know, as a librarian outside those communities trying to facilitate take things that's where I struggled with my words and.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): You know, I was trying to figure Should I be referring to people with disabilities as people with disabilities or differentially abled and then there's I couldn't find any consensus on that and I just kind of left it.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): I abandoned it because I couldn't I couldn't find a definitive terminology, to use.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): I mean the way I heard.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): in various contexts, and that is the focus of the whole session but that link data can help in that you basically don't have to.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): choose one term prefer it and then have all the other ones say see X, but that it can be kind of transparent that all those different access points can be in the authority record and then, however, the.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): User you know searching comes at it, they get what they need and they're sort of not presented with language that may offend them.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Oh that's great to know.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): and actually that might be a good session like How does link data work, you know I just kind of like look at the structure and say that looks like an authority record right.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): So I would love to see how it actually happens.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): there's actually a couple sessions coming up, I think sometime over the next couple weeks Harvard is doing a session I can forward that info which I just received today to.
Ellen McGrath (she/her): Where workplace I don't know what the best places.
Maggie McGee: workplace would be great if you do know the hate HQ that'd be a great place to put it, thank you.
Maggie McGee: Okay, thanks.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): So we are getting.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): winding down we're at the end of our session i'd like to thank everybody who jumped in and helped me out here, because, like I said I noticed the problem but I didn't know how to fix it and I think we have some ideas about going forward, which is.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): A good thing to do at least to be thinking about it and.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Hopefully, you know as a as a profession, we can come up with solutions.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): So we will be sharing the recording and the slides and i'll grab some of the the chat conversations and make those available because you all had some really good.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): links to take a look at, and if you have any if you think of stuff I think workplace would be a great place to continue the conversation so as you start stumbling I know I found this thing where here's a session on this thing that would be great to share that so other people can attend.
Maggie McGee: Thank you, Marianne really for yesterday sessions today session and all your hard work it's amazing and it really helps illustrate.
Maggie McGee: how complex this whole process is.
Marianne Hebert (she/her): Well, thank you, everybody.
Thank you.