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Our Metadata, Ourselves

NETSL 2023: Transforming Passion into Action

B.M. Watson, UBC iSchool

Jackson Huang, University of Michigan�14 April 2023�CC-BY-NC

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Convening

While institutions hold trans and gender diverse resources, resources often have incorrect or inadequate metadata

Existing controlled vocabularies and classification systems under- and mis-represent trans and gender diverse people and subjects

Trans and gender diverse subjects and creators may be misgendered or misnamed

Convening; this was the initial meeting of the TMDC went out. After the call for participants we called for a convening; these initial meetings had nearly a hundred interested parties, which evolved into 4 core working groups and then into

Recognizing the theme of NETSL, in this keynote we are going to walk you through the process of how & why we created, organized, and did the labour for the TMDC. ��First, I will give the context of why the TMDC and why

Then Jackson will discuss how the labor and credit of the group worked

I will recount the history of

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Culmination

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FRANCES LYDIA YOCOM

DOROTHY B. PORTER

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�Cataloging, Interrupted�

Viewing classification and cataloguing from a queer perspective...requires new ways of thinking about how to be ethically and politically engaged. ��A queer analysis intervenes in this shared discourse and offers a way to reconsider such systems as always already biased, remedied not by correctness once and for all but engaged as a site of productive resistance.� Drabinski, Queering the Catalog

Sanford “Sandy” Berman’s 1971 book Prejudices and Antipathies: A Tract on the LC Subject Heads Concerning People.28 Berman, perhaps the best-known radical cataloger, began his campaign after the experience of working in Zambia as a librarian, where he was told that the term kaffir—present in LCSH as a “neutral” descriptor—was considered a particularly racist slur.29 The result of his investigation was the aforementioned Tract, which amounted to a full-fledged attack on the racist, sexist, and Eurocentric nature of LCSH. Berman, alongside other activists, including the Poor People’s Campaign and the ALA’s Task Force on Gay Liberation, worked from within the cataloging world to pressure change in LCSH, with varying levels of success. By 2012, Berman’s personal LCSH “scorecard” documented nearly 100 accepted revisions or proposals alongside over 200 that LC had rejected or not yet acted upon.30 Berman’s initial documentation of LC’s “insidious labeling processes” initiated a near-continuous tradition of librarians and catalogers re-reading of subject terms with an eye toward revision. 31 It also undoubtedly contributed to the founding of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) in 1992, as well as LC’s Policy and Standards Division which effectively institutionalized a process previously conducted via public petition and political remonstrance.‡

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Library of Congress Subject Headings

Four broad categories of trans identities�
Three concepts for gender diversity�
Some existing headings around lived experience�
Full (and updating) list of relevant LCSH in document appendix

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Three concepts for gender diversity

Four broad categories of trans identities

Transgender people
Gender nonconforming people
Transsexuals�
Two-spirit people �⚠️ Only use for Indigenous resources!

Gender identity�
Gender nonconformity�
Gender expression

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LCSH around lived experience

Gender transition�
Transphobia�
Gender-neutral toilet facilities�
Social work with gender-nonconforming youth

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Labor & Credit

How do we create space for consensual participation that respects capacity but also gets work done?
How do we distribute credit fairly and accurately?

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Distribution of Labor, Distribution of Credit

Both personal and professional stake in this work, though trans and gender diverse metadata is rarely the primary focus of contributor’s work
This work is unpaid monetarily but allows contributors to have the professional impact they want, shaping who can participate – often junior staff and faculty members at academic institutions
First author of the is the collective, with remaining authors listed alphabetically and all authors and reviewers listed out in the guide

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Convening & Coordinating

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Commencement

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Guideline goals

Concrete and actionable recommendations for metadata professionals
Usable across institution types and experience levels
Balance of high level and granular guidelines

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Organization of Guidelines

Background and approach
General guidelines and guiding principles
Domain-specific details

subject headings
name authorities

Authors and reviewers
Appendices

glossary
list of all relevant LCSH
annotated sources

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Why we use “trans and gender diverse”

Gender is culturally specific; cis/trans is not a universal framework
Institutions often hold materials on communities or individuals that do not fit into the Eurocentric gender model, e.g. colonial acquisitions of materials on indigenous communities with their own gender systems
While trans =/= gender diverse, there are many overlapping issues and consequently recommendations

we didn’t want the guidelines to be a trans 101 (it’s practical resource for metadata professionals), but gender is a complex and at times fraught subject, so we did want to explain our rationale behind certain decisions; in particular, I want to highlight and explore our choice to use “trans and gender diverse” as a framework

Gender is not just about presentation/identity, but includes your social role and cosmological place – this make conceptualizations of gender culturally specific. Obviously there can be communication and understanding and overlap between communities, but gender systems may also require translation rather than direct equivalence
While currently in the US, there’s a culturally dominant understanding of gender as both binary (man vs woman) and static (your gender is based on sex assigned at birth). Other peoples historically and in the present have their own cosmological conceptualizations of the world and of gender – where the assumptions of “binary” and “static” may not apply or be understood very differently
Likewise, trans is a culturally and historically specific framework, which may not map exactly onto other cultural understandings of gender – thus we use “gender diverse” as a stand-in umbrella term for conceptualizations of gender that fall outside of that static binary; peoples and languages have had and still have their own culturally specific gender terms, which they may use instead of or alongside the term “trans”
So why is this important to spell out in the context of libraries and archives?

Because of the ways that settler colonialism and colonialism abroad have influenced collecting policies and practices at US and Canadian libraries and archives, they often hold at least some materials from or about the Indigenous peoples; many “influential white men from history” were also hobbyist ethnographers, so there is often ethnographic material hidden within larger collections
We want professionals to consider how these guidelines apply beyond a narrow conventional understanding of “trans archives”, to understand the ways in which trans and gender diverse resources may not appear in those spaces (for example, material that’s instead organized in an anthropological archive) and because of how current society’s gender terms/conceptions don’t necessarily map to other cultures/ways of being ex. Indigenous ways of being, people don’t always view themselves as trans

While trans =/= gender diverse, there are many overlapping issues and recommendations – gender diverse resources from other cultural contexts may also already be labelled within the collection with trans subject terms

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Guiding Principles

Make the process of metadata creation transparent
Use culturally and contextually appropriate labels for trans and gender diverse communities and subjects
Correctly name and identify trans individuals
Be explicit about transphobia in collections, items, and metadata
Identify trans-related content and metadata through regular assessment and prioritize for remediation

[Jackson]

These are guiding principles that are meant to be useful regardless of material/institution type and level of capacity or experience

Make the process of metadata creation transparent

Implement versioning to track changes in description over time in digital and paper records.
Provide clear channels for feedback and workflows to assess and implement those suggestions.
Make descriptive standards and rationale public.

Use culturally and contextually appropriate labels for trans and gender diverse communities and subjects

Include terms in the original language (original script and transliterated) alongside added primary language translation and description. Prioritize terms used within a community!
Practice respectful and reciprocal collaboration with the specific communities affected to determine appropriate terminology.
Indicate term changes over time and modern synonyms (as such)

Correctly name and identify trans individuals

Rely on self-identification and self-description where possible
If an individual is referred to with multiple names, reach out to confirm or use the most recent version
It is not generally necessary or appropriate to record the gender of a creator, if it is not related to the resource

Be explicit about transphobia in collections, items, and metadata

Proactively identify sensitive language and content, rather than relying solely on patron reports
Correct offensive or inaccurate language provided by other metadata creators at both the collection- and item-level

Identify trans-related content and metadata through regular assessment and prioritize for remediation

Plan proactively for periodic assessment and remediation, including identification of trans and gender diverse materials within larger collections
Avoid relying solely on automation for batch replacement of terms, using it instead as a tool to aid assessment
Use qualitative analysis around the rationale and impact of existing description.

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Subject Headings and Name Authorities

Guidelines lean towards Library of Congress, but discussion of terms and concepts more broadly relevant
Recommendations of what existing LCSH’s to use and in what circumstances, and which to (generally) avoid
Alternative vocabularies and suggesting new subject headings
Recording gender (generally don’t) and names in name authorities

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Contributors and Appendices

(Voluntary) self-description for all authors and reviewers
Glossary and additional resources for those who want more support around trans and gender diverse topics

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Concluding

Types & locations of implementation & impacts (please share in the chat!)
TMDC document updated on a rolling basis (Jun/Dec.)

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Queer Metadata Collective

queermetadatacollective.org

Ethical Framework
Classification
Description
Subject Headings
Names, Naming, & Authorities