week 6 reading response

I'm just going to respond to "The Power to Name" for this week. It had a lot in it and I don't think I will even get to cover all my thoughts on it. First of all, I can see how a certain amount of controlled vocabulary would be necessary in order to streamline searches. However, I think the problem is that too few people think “outside the box” and don’t think to add additional tags, subjects or names to pieces of information. I agree with the article when it talked about how our labels only appeared neutral; this also reminded me of our class discussion on racial neutrality. We don’t live in a gender/racial/etc neutral society, so we shouldn’t pretend that our labels are such. Although Cutter created his cataloging system almost 150 years ago, his “presumption of universality” (5) is still relevant today. We can easily see how even 50 years ago many groups were being excluded from participation in mainstream society- racial minorities, GLBT, people with disabilities. In fact, because these groups have made such visible progress in gains such as civil rights, I think we have suffer from a tendency to see issues of exclusion and discrimination as no longer significant.
As librarians, I think we need to keep examining our self-censorship, i.e. continue to question ourselves as to why we are referring to something or searching for something in that particular way. I liked some of the author’s suggestions on ways to make the catalogue more accessible, especially typing in one word and having the search engine automatically look at alternate spellings as well (23). The idea for having users create their own links is also good, but I fear that many marginalized users would not be able to make use of this.
The article also brought to mind the displays libraries choose to have. At the public library where I work, we have several displays that change every month. I have been asking the reference librarians how they choose their subject material. Some of it is seasonal (like books on camping during August) but overall there is a wide subject range. The librarians said that their main focus was to put up displays that would appeal to patrons that we have visiting our location. I asked if they were ever worried about offending any patrons with display subjects. They said no, because this is Madison, and it’s hard to offend people here. On the flip side, they also said that they feel it is a part of their job to make patrons question their own assumptions. So it seems like that it is a delicate balance: providing materials you believe the patron would already want, while also providing or displaying other materials that might make them uncomfortable. Hmmm… I also discuss this a bit more in my Collection Development assignment.
I think a good cataloging system will be self-critical, and also have input from the widest selection of people/groups possible. Catalogers should definietly be hitting the streets and asking people "how would you like to be referred to? What issues, attributes and problems do you believe are most connected with your identity?" That would keep it real and accessible for a lot more of us.