New LCSH!

2017-06-102017-06-14 ~ nganin ~ 3 Comments

As always — check out the full approved list

The following are newly approved headings which I proposed [or canceled LCSH in favor of NARs]

Anti-vaccination movement
Charity–Religious aspects–Buddhism [Christianity, etc.]
Death of God in literature
Farhud, Baghdad, Iraq, 1941
Intersectionality (Sociology)
HM488.5 [class number for Intersectionality]
Card games [LCGFT term]
Green Arrow (Fictitious character) [Canceled in favor of NAR]
Lane, Lois (Fictitious character) [Canceled in favor of NAR]
Luthor, Lex (Fictitious character) [Canceled in favor of NAR]
Strange, Adam (Fictitious character) [Canceled in favor of NAR]

Onto the headings!

Avarice in motion pictures

still from "Fight Club" depicting the 'Greed' crime scene — No, “Greed in motion pictures” isn’t a UF

Cello and electric guitar music

Still of 'Heiven' a Finnish metal band that has a cellist — For some reason only the string players hold their instruments, but I assure you there’s a guitar too

Cooking (Poppies)

Still from 'Wizard of Oz' when they're in the poppy field — Arguably, the Wicked Witch was cooking up a plan with those poppies? Kinda?

Couples on television

still from Once Upon a Time that shows Regina and Emma almost kissing — SWEN 4 LIFE

Earthquakes–Australia

Sydney Opera House on crest of giant wave — they always come for our landmarks first

Flipped classrooms

upside down classroom — Even I think this is silly

Governors–Farewell addresses

Still from Rick Perry's farewell address — Not every farewell address rises to “One Last Time” level

Hockey on television

Still from Simpsons on Ice episode of Simpsons — All I know of hockey I learned from this episode and Mighty Ducks

Hydrocodone

House in a bathtub fulla vicodin — I don’t have a pain management problem, I have a pain problem

Lamas in art

painting of a llama blowing a bubble — I wanna see that spiritual leader blow a bubble as dope as this

Man-faced bulls

Polar bear–Counting

RagaMuffin cat

Siberian cat

Sorcerer’s apprentice (Tale)

Cosplayer of Sorcerer's Apprentice — Admit it, you can hear the music right now

Space ships in motion pictures

Star Trek Discovery — What’s the deal with this? We need a new streaming whatever? Excited to see Yeoh in the chair

Tea bowls

Tea bowl with ceramic teeth on it — I would not like to drink from this

Virtual reality headsets

80s woman wearing VR headset — I look forward to trying VR one day and being half this cool

Women superheroes in motion pictures

Wonder Woman 'No Man's Land' scene — I cried

Women superheroes on television

LCGFT

Hanukkah music

Sheet music for a Hanukkah song — What, you don’t have string quartets at your Hanukkah parties?

Paranormal drama

Promo still for Supernatural — It has a UF of Supernatural drama, so it counts

Rock operas

Savatage's Wake of Magellan — Savatage actually has a lotta great rock operas

Visual albums

New LCSH!

2017-05-172017-06-14 ~ nganin ~ 2 Comments

As always — check out the full approved list

The following are newly approved headings which I proposed [or canceled LCSH in favor of NARs]

Sex workers
Lap dancers [added BT to Sex workers]
Strip teasers [added BT to Sex workers]
Prostitutes [added BT to Sex workers]
Sex surrogates [added BT to Sex workers]
Board games [LCGFT term]
Kings and rulers [added RT to Queens]
Cthulhu (Fictitious character)
Jennings (Fictitious character)

Here’s the post I wrote a post about Sex workers before I proposed the term.

Onto the headings!

Baseball in dance

Dancers dressed as baseball players — I hope he takes the glove off before trying a lift

Baseball in motion pictures

Still from "League of their own" — Name a better baseball movie than LoTO. I’ll wait

Camelidae in art

Joe Camel smoking a cigarette — Smoking is COOL, kids!

Debt in popular culture

I'm convinced that we can't create a vibrant future for library workers, libraries +library associations without dealing with reality of 1/n

— Lisa Hinchliffe (@lisalibrarian) May 15, 2017

This thread is very good.

Extraterrestrial beings on television

Rigel from Farscape — I’m never *not* gonna rep Farscape

Framing (Cinematography)

Still from Mad Men — For more amazing cinematog with Moss, see Handmaid’s Tale

Holocaust deniers

a dumpster on fire

Human-alien encounters on television

Gillian Anderson as Scully meeting some fans dressed as aliens — Pretty sure I don’t remember this episode

Iron in human nutrition

Magneto pulling iron from guy's blood in X2 — Remember, too much iron is bad for you

Mothers of rock musicians

Image of Geddy Lee and his mother — Geddy’s mom is actually in the book that justified the creation of this heading

United States–Foreign relations–2017-

Dumpster fire

United States–Politics and government–2017-

Video game designers

Picture of Tracy Fullerton — Tracy Fullerton is working on a game about Walden that sounds p cool

LCGFT terms

Animal fiction

Comic book cover with Animal from The Muppets — Nailed it

Campus fiction

Cover of "Campus Tramp" — Lawrence Block is really tossing us catalogers a bone

Mumblecore films

Still from "The Overnight" — Don’t let Adam Scott’s terrible facial hair trick you: The Overnight is v funny

Novelizations

Novelization of The Nightmare Before Christmas — A novelization doesn’t seem like it’ll quite capture what makes this movie good

Opera adaptations

Still from The Fly, the opera — I hope there’s an aria: “Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid”

Rock lyrics

Neil Peart lyric sheet for "Closer to the Heart" — If you already think Neil Peart’s lyrics are pretentious [unsubscribe plz] wait’ll you see the way he wrote ’em

Guess the movie!

2017-04-292017-05-11 ~ nganin ~ Leave a comment

Previously in this ‘series’

*i’m changing the rule from last time and just pretending all the things that aren’t in LCSH or the NAF, are, sorryNotSorry

651 _ 0 LV-426 (Satellite)

650 _ 0 Xenomorph $x Eggs $x Incubation.

650 _ 0 Xenomorph $x Growth.

650 _ 0 Xenomorph $x Life cycle.

650 _ 0 Xenomorph $x Chemical defenses.

650 _ 0 Xenomorph $x Embryos $x Transplantation.

650 _ 0 Xenomorph $x Effect of altitude on.

650 _ 0 Xenomorph $x Effect of fires on.

650 _ 0 Male pregnancy.

650 _ 0 Miners $x Death.

650 _ 0 Human-alien encounters.

600 1 0 Ripley, Ellen, $d 2092-2179 $x Adversaries.

600 1 0 Ripley, Ellen, $d 2092-2179 $x Career in courage.

600 1 0 Kane, Gilbert, $d 2083-2122 $x Relations with extraterrestrial beings.

600 0 0 Ash $c (Android) $x Knowledge $x Special order 937.

600 0 0 Jonesy $c (Cat)

610 2 0 Nostromo (Ship)

650 _ 0 Ships $x Abandoning of.

New LCSH!

2017-04-16 ~ nganin ~ Leave a comment

As always — check out the full approved list

All the _____, Mogul headings have been changed to ______, Mogul Empire

The following are my headings [or canceled headings in favor of name authority records]

Atom (Fictitious character)
Bachelors in rabbinical literature [BM496.9.B34]
Vigilante (Fictitious character : DC Comics, Inc.)

Another heading I proposed, Nakba, Palestine, 1948 — was not approved. I wrote up my thoughts about that non-approval.

Onto the headings!

Big Blowup, 1910

Cooking in mass media

She always said she was salty on twitter.

Christian Science Plaza (Boston, Mass.)

I wouldn’t trust them to recommend a doctor, but that’s a dope plaza.

Civil rights of corporations

Dicycles

Guerillas in motion pictures

Guy Fawkes masks

I bet Guy Fawkes would be real confused if he came back today

Hides and skins — Symbolic aspects

Most iterations do not have the cutlass tho

Lunch counters

Marijuana in literature

Patient rooms

celebration-patient room.jpg — okay, well all the rooms i’ve stayed in were not this nice

Water buffalo meat

Women video gamers

I saw her speak once, pretty good stuff!

Necessary But Not Sufficient

2017-04-12 ~ nganin ~ Leave a comment

By now you may’ve seen the new grant that I’m sponsoring through ALCTS: here’s the announcement and here’s the grant itself.

As I think transparency [particularly when it comes to bureaucracy], I thought I’d take a minute to explain some of the hows and whys that this has come to be.

There is a general backstory and a specific backstory.

First, the general:

Librarianship is not a diverse profession. Much has been written on the ways and means to address this: a brief bibliography [courtesy of Jessica Schomberg] is linked.

I also recommend this tweet storm by Anna-Sophia Zingarelli Sweet

https://twitter.com/aszingarelli/status/823929490304827394

This is a complex issue and it cannot be solved by throwing money at it. The inequalities that exist in society and of course librarianship are not going to vanish through more private grants.

I want to make that very clear, so I put it right in the title. It’s insufficient. It’s insufficient to give money to people who are already on the path to librarianship because we’re missing people who were never encouraged to pursue this career. We’re missing those who can’t afford to pursue the career.

It’s insufficient because bringing one person to an ALA conference doesn’t mean that the’ll be respected, or listened to, or given room at the mic. It’s insufficient because they may return with bold ideas and a mind full of change and be facing an institution which embraces neither.

Yet.

It’s necessary — which leads me to the specific:

A few weeks after ALA Annual 2016 [Jun 23-28] I saw a peer on twitter lamenting that she was unable to attend a conference for lack of funds. This colleague, so early in her career, and in a field in which so few people look like her, had already impressed me with her confidence and voice as a cataloger.

I reached out to her and offered to pay the registration fee — she graciously declined, and I understood that there was an impropriety to what I’d offered, even if it came from a good place. Offering money to [and taking from] people, although ostensibly a nice thing to do, is laden with social and cultural rules and expectations.

But I still wanted to make a difference and help others like her get to the professional conferences and and meetings where big things happen. I briefly flirted with the idea of starting some kind of grant on my own, but that would still have some of the “rando giving you money” vibe. I knew that I needed the power and weight of an institution of some kind behind me. I needed to go legit.

On July 19th — I emailed Keri Cascio, our wonderful, hardworking, and talented ALCTS Executive Director. I explained what I wanted to do and over the next many months she put into motion [along with Susan Wynne] the complex forms and discussions necessary to get this off the ground. This simply could not have become a reality without her, and she has my deepest gratitude.

To sum up:

It is necessary because it will bring one more person to the table — someone to whom we need to be listening and to whom we haven’t been.

It is insufficient because it is a tiny speck amidst an entire culture [both at large and in libship] of Nice White People who think that we’re open and welcoming and that we’re all doing what needs to be done.

It is my honor and privilege to be a part of this grant, and it is my duty to find ways to do more.

The Breadth of Women and Men, Pt. 3

2017-04-092017-04-09 ~ nganin ~ Leave a comment

Bolded words refer to extant LCSH terms

Links to previous parts: Part 1, Part 2.

Having matched [as best I could] the NT terms of Men and Women in Part 1 — I then looked at the NTs of Men which did not have a match to the NTs of Women but which had a counterpart in LCSH that for some reason or other was not in the hierarchy of Women. I’m now turning to the NTs of Women and going to perform the same analysis.

The following terms are NTs of Women which do not have an equivalent term in the NTs of Women. For each I’ll provide either one of three options for potential equivalents:

None: This indicates that there isn’t a term in LCSH that I think could be an equivalent candidate as an NT of Women.
N/A: This indicates that I don’t think an equivalent term could exist. That is, the concept is limited, not just in LCSH.
[Specific term which exists in LCSH]: In some cases I’ve found a specific term which matches, but is not currently an NT of Women.

Advertising and women   None
Architecture and women None
Assyrian women     None
Beauty contestants   None
Buddhist women    None
Computers and women   None
Crones N/A
Dalit women      None
Dance for women    None
Daughters-in-law      Sons-in-law
Discounts for women     None
Exercise for women Exercise for men
Fascism and women None
Gentile women    None
Hindu women    None
Internet and women   None
Jaina women      None
Jewish religious education of women None
Large-breasted women N/A
Libraries and women None
Mass media and women   None
Matriarchy    Patriarchy
Medically uninsured women None
Mentally ill women   None
Minority women    None
Museums and women   None
National socialism and women None
Physical education for women   None
Pregnant women      Male pregnancy
Puerto Rican women None
Queens    Kings and rulers
Racially mixed women None
Radio and women   None
Retired women    None
Runaway women    None
Samaritan women None
Scolds    N/A
Sedentary women   None
Self-defense for women None
Self-employed women None
Separated women None
Sexual ethics for women None
Sikh women    None
Syriac women    None
Taoist women    None
Technology and women   None
Television and women   None
United States. Navy—Women None
Video games for women None
Women’s mass media Men’s mass media
Yezidi women    None
Zoroastrian women None

Notice that there are significantly more NTs of Women — and the vast majority are unmatchable as it stands. Remember too that a rule of BT creation is that for any […] and […] heading, a BT is made for the second term. What that means is that for all the […] and women headings, the BT connection to Women is obligatory. But what that doesn’t mean is that these are the only headings that are coinjoining women and a concept — for example:

Women and anarchism
Women and animals
Women and city planning

None of these have Women as a BT because the first term is women and the BT is made to the second term.

I highlight these examples to show that LCSH isn’t saying “These are all the concepts which are inherently included in the concept of a woman, enumerated and collated for your convenience.” LCSH’s structure and rules make it so that gleaning total semantic meaning from the hierarchies is impossible.

There are many unmatched racial/ethnic/religious/class/status qualified terms. There is little doubt in my mind that when a book is published about a specific group of people, unless that book says in the title that it’s about the men of that group even if it only has the men as examples or case studies or discussion points — the subject heading [….] men will not be created. The men are neutral, and the women are a marked difference.

Nakba, Palestine, 1948

2017-04-012017-04-01 ~ nganin ~ 1 Comment

Over the course of the war of Israel’s statehood — over 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes.

Amongst Palestinians this loss of home and land is known as the Nakba [al-Nakbah, Arabic for catastrophe]

I was cataloging a resource, Palestinians in Syria: Nakba memories of shattered communities by Anaheed Al-Hardan and was trying to determine some good subject headings.

Reading the table of contents, the back of the book and the preface — it was clear that this was a resource partially about the shared memories/feelings/affect that the Nakba had on the Palestinian people.

A cursory search of LCSH revealed that there was no heading for this particular expulsion [which I could then propose a subdivision of — Influence under]

Thus I created a proposal for the term — this is that proposal:

010 $a sp2017000197

040 $a MWalB $b eng $c DLC

150 $a Nakba, Palestine, 1948

450 $a Catastrophe, Palestine, 1948

450 $a Nakbah, Palestine, 1948

550 $w g $a Israel-Arab War, 1948-1949

550 $w g $a Population transfers $x Palestinian Arabs

670 $a Work cat: 945105294: Palestinians in Syria: Nakba memories of shattered communities, 2016: $b Preface (…the Nakba, or catastrophe, that resulted from the establishment of the state of Israel on Palestine in May 1948. This catastrophe saw the dispossession of more than half of historic Palestine’s population, some 800,000 people.)

670 $a 854503654: Auron, Yair. haShoʼah, ha-teḳumah ṿeha-Nakbah, 2013: $b (English title: The Holocaust, the rebirth and the Nakba)

670 $a 820884307: Masalha, Nur. The Palestine Nakba, 2012: $b Introduction (1948 was the year of the Palestine Nakba (Catastrophe), the uprooting of the Palestinians and the dismemberment and de-Arabisation of historic Palestine.)

As you can see, I added two additional sources demonstrating the preferred form of the name and to generate UF references.

Yesterday the PSD evaluated my proposal and rejected it for the following reason:

Nabka refers to the 1948 expulsion of Palestinian Arabs from British Mandate Palestine (today’s Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Jordan). The existing heading Population transfers—Palestinian Arabs is synonymous, or nearly synonymous, in meaning to the heading being proposed; it should be assigned to the work being cataloged. The proposal was not approved.

While I’m unsure why the PSD defined the term for me, when I’d clearly understood it myself in the proposal, the second half is completely wrong.

I then sent Libby Dechman [the policy specialist responsible for the list] the following email [and a big thank-you to Anna-Sophia for reading it and providing me with feedback!]

Dear Libby,

Having seen the PSDs decision to not approve the above heading, I was hoping to have an opportunity to explain why I think it is a necessary heading.

In the explanation given you write:

“The existing heading Population transfers—Palestinian Arabs is synonymous, or nearly synonymous, in meaning to the heading being proposed”

The crux of my objection is that it is not at all synonymous with Population transfers–Palestinian Arabs, because it is only an instance of that. My proposal specifically included Population transfers–Palestinian Arabs as a BT term, because there are other instances where this happened.

1. From 1949-1956 thousands of Palestinians continued to be removed after the Nakba.

2. In 1967, 280,000 to 325,000 Palestinians were removed after the Six Day War.

3. In 1991 some 200,000 Palestinians were driven out of Kuwait aftter the Gulf war.

4. In 1999 roughly 1000 Palestinians were expelled from South Mt. Hebron

etc.

In the event that the problem lay in my construction of the proposal, a named event in accordance with H1592, I had considered two other constructions:

1. Palestinian Arabs–Palestine–History–Expulsion, 1948 (c.f. Acadians—Nova Scotia—History—Expulsion, 1755; Jews—England—History—Expulsion, 1290)

2. Palestinian Arabs–Relocation, 1948 (c.f. Japanese—Canada—Evacuation and relocation, 1942-1945)

I had also considered the BT Forced migration–Palestine

My point is that this occurrence, the Nakba, is but one among many, an instance among the general–a perfect example of a BT/NT relationship. Some resources are written about the general and various forced movements of the Palestinians, and other resources are written about the specific instance of the Nakba.

I hope I’ve justified why I think this heading deserves a second look and why it is not synonymous with Population transfers–Palestinian Arabs.

I appreciate any guidance you can give me on a better or more fit construction if you deem that necessary.

Thank you so much for your time,

I’ll update this post when/if I hear back.

If you change one, you must change them all

2017-03-232017-05-24 ~ nganin ~ Leave a comment

*bolded terms refer to an authorized LCSH term*

If you read my last post about Transgenderism then you know that LCSH uses the term as an umbrella for a wide variety of gender non-conformant identities and behaviors. As I said last time, that term at one point was indeed used to indicate a broader set of identities and behaviors, but now is mostly used [by anti-trans activists] to refer specifically to people whose gender identity does not match that which they were assigned at birth — a much more narrow definition.

These conflations in LCSH however, have trickled down to another heading: Transgender people. The narrower terms assigned are:

Christian transgender people

Female impersonators

Jewish transgender people

Libraries and transgender people

Male impersonators

Social work with transgender people

Transgender children

Transsexuals

Transvestites

[Emphasis mine] the highlighted terms above leap out to me as terribly incorrectly placed. [I’ll acknowledge here that the specific relationship between Transsexuals and Transgender people may be improperly constructed as well]

The ‘impersonator’ headings have variant terms of ‘Drag queens’ and ‘Drag kings’ respectively and have parallel scope notes of:

Here are entered works on men who impersonate women, generally for purposes of entertainment or comic effect. Works on women who impersonate men, generally for purposes of entertainment or comic effect, are entered under Male impersonators. Works on persons, especially males, who assume the dress and manner of the opposite sex for psychological gratification are entered under Transvestites.

[the sexes are swapped in the scope note for Male impersonators]

Here’s the problem:

Female/male impersonators cover a wide range of things from theatrical cross-sex performance to drag performers but neither type of performer is inherently a trans person. Certainly some trans people have performed drag professionally, but it is an emphatic error to place drag performers as NT under Transgender people.

Transvestites doesn’t belong here either. As the scope note indicates above, LCSH understands that it’s primarily a practice among straight men, for reasons other than entertainment or public performance. As with the impersonator headings, a variant term, ‘cross dressers’ is actually preferred by practitioners.

LCSH continuing to collapse varied forms of gender performance and expression under Transgender people does harm to trans people, especially trans women, and plays right into the hands of the politicians, their malicious laws, and anti-trans activists.

Recommendation: Delete the BT connecting Male impersonators and Female impersonators to Transgender people. Delete the BT connecting Transvestites to Transgender people and change the preferred term to Cross dressers. Future consideration is to make separate headings for Drag kings/queens as NTs of Male/Female impersonators.

Transgenderism

2017-03-202017-03-23 ~ nganin ~ 1 Comment

*bolded terms refer to an authorized LCSH term*

It is no secret that LCSH is a mess when it comes to gender and sexuality. Today, I want to focus specifically on a single term in the hierarchies of trans identities. [With an eye towards continuing this look at other terms]

First: Transgenderism, whose scope note reads:

Here are entered works on the various manifestations of cross-gender orientation, such as transvestism, transsexualism, male or female impersonation, intersexuality, etc., treated collectively.

From this well springs forth a great deal of trouble, because what even is this term? A google search [March 18, 2017] reveals the following from page 1: [CN: ANTI-TRANS RHETORIC]

Wikipedia [Transgender]
Focus on the Family [Understanding “Transgenderism”]
Focus on the Family [Transgenderism – Our Position]
Oxford English Dictionary [transgenderism]
Federalist [Psychiatry Professor: ‘Transgenderism’ Is Mass Hysteria Similar To 1980s-Era Junk Science]
Daily Wire [Report: Transgenderism Not Supported By Science]
Daily Caller [Journal: Transgenderism ‘Not Supported By Scientific Evidence’]
Huffington Post portal [Three articles all affirming trans people’s humanity]
Pacific Standard [Five Studies: What You Need to Know About Transgenderism, According to the Research]
New Yorker [WHAT IS A WOMAN? The dispute between radical feminism and transgenderism.]
Public Discourse [The Absurdity of Transgenderism: A Stern but Necessary Critique]
National Review [Making Sense of Transgenderism]

So from my count that’s 8 anti-trans hits, 2 reference sources [one of which doesn’t even use the term in the header], 2 mostly positive hits

The term in LCSH’s use is meant to be a broad umbrella to cover the concept gender non-conformity. That is indeed a useful concept for which to have a term, albeit a broad one. Unfortunately the scope of the term in its modern usage [the heading was entered in 2007] has shifted to be much more narrow. All of the above sources are specifically referring to the concept that people’s gender identities don’t match their assignment at birth.

Let’s look at the heading’s usage in WorldCat [search of su:Transgenderism, limited to 2016, books, first 10 hits]

Of these 10 — only a single one [Transantiquity, 5] has been assigned Transgenderism to mean anything other than “the concept that some people’s gender identities don’t match their assignment at birth”. I contend that the vast majority of assignments will follow suit.

We need a term for that concept, and perhaps Transgenderism is that term, perhaps not [edit: see below, 2017-03-22] But just as importantly we need a different term for the wider scope of “gender non-conformity”. If LCSH wants there to be an umbrella term which encompasses what the current scope note above [all the way at the top!] does, the concept that there are people who cross dress for sexual satisfaction, perform drag, are transsexual, are transgender, are intersex — it cannot be Transgenderism because that is simply not how the term is being used, neither in resources, nor in cataloger application.

Recommendation: Add new term to LCSH for the broad concept of gender non-conformity. Limit the scope of Transgenderism [or replace the term for one which people actually use] to the concept of being transgender specifically.

Edit: 2017-03-22

After consideration, and checking sources — I’ve come to the understanding that Transgenderism must be removed from LCSH, contrary to the above recommendation. From the sources:

“This is not a term commonly used by transgender people. This is a term used by anti-transgender activists to dehumanize transgender people and reduce who they are to “a condition.” — GLAAD

Much like those who still refer to gay people exclusively as “homosexuals,” the majority of the people who use the word “transgenderism” are either biased against the community, such as the discredited anti-trans “expert”Dr. Paul McHugh, or harbor hatred toward the trans community, like the right-wing organization classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Family Research Council. — Advocate

So one thing I want to ask: why do we need this term? That is, are there resources about “the concept that some people’s gender identities don’t match their assignment at birth” that would not be better met with the term Transgender people? I’m not convinced. On the other hand there are many dual terms for “Concept” and then “concept as manifested in people”. Ex. Poverty, Poor, Bisexuality, Bisexuals, Disabilities, People with disabilities. I bring this up because I don’t think that the PSD would be so amenable to removing the noun-concept word entirely.

Edited Recommendation: Add new term to LCSH for the broad concept of gender non-conformity [with the scope note of the current term Transgenderism.] Make the term Transgenderism a variant of Transgender people. [Or find a better term for the concept of trans-ness]