The Library of Congress’ Outdated & Biased Classifications

Over the break, Stonehill students, faculty, and staff celebrated Indigenous Peoples' Day. Indigenous Peoples’ Day recognizes Native Americans who have contributed to the history of the United States, despite the many wrongdoings upon their culture and people. Stonehill previously changed the college’s holiday policy to recognize Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead of Columbus Day as part of ongoing diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

There is much DEI work that remains to be done, and some of it must take place in libraries. For example, we can help educate the community about biases and misrepresentations that can be found in library catalogs everywhere – problems that library professionals, faculty, authors, and students nationwide are striving to eliminate.

Stonehill, like most academic libraries in the U.S., uses the Library of Congress Classification System to catalog and organize books. Library of Congress classifies books by 21 basic terms which are identified by a single letter of the alphabet. Then these topics are divided into more specific subclasses identified by 2 or 3 letter combinations. For example, the letter “R” is used for the topic of medicine and “RD” is the subclass for surgery. Although it may seem boring, students should care about how the Library of Congress and other library classification systems classify terms. Why? While this system seems harmless and objective, it is filled with terminology that is biased, offensive, and culturally insensitive to underrepresented groups. 

Some of the most prominent examples of these biases and cultural insensitivities lie with the categories of race and gender. For example, Native American people are currently classified as “American Indians” and “Indians of North America.” These classifications are not an accurate representation of Native American people. The terms “American Indians” and “Indians of North America” classify Native Americans with those of Asian nations, but they also group Native Americans together despite the many differences in culture within the Native American nation.

Currently the Library of Congress is considering changes to those classifications. Heather O'Leary, MacPhaidin Library's Collection Development Librarian, oversees the cataloging library resources. She said she is monitoring the Library of Congress directives regarding changes to subject headings. Now, the Library of Congress has formed a group including subject specialists, collection curators, reference librarians, and archivists which will devise a project plan for implementing changes to subject headings related to indigenous peoples. It will likely be quite some time before those changes are finalized and reflected in our library catalog.

That is not the only concern with library classification that needs to be addressed. Another example of misclassification is the term “women.” Based on research conducted by Brendan J. Honick, in the Library of Congress, there are 4,605 terms identified with the term “women,” but only 444 words related to the word “men.” The disproportion of the use of “men’ and “women” raises concern as the Library of Congress assumes the maleness of subjects instead of equally distributing the words “men” and “women” to narrow subjects further. Other scholars have studied the outdated and often offensive language used in subject headings to describe Black and LGBTQIA+ populations.

Initially it may seem harmless to inappropriately label certain subjects. However, the misclassification of subjects not only makes it harder to find research on said subjects, but it hinders the value that underrepresented groups bring to society.

For more on Indigenous Peoples’ Day, several works in the library’s collection provide information on the Wampanoag and their land, including: This Land is Their Land: the Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving, and King Philip's War: Colonial Expansion, Native Resistance, and the End of Indian Sovereignty.

For additional reading/viewing about Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples’ Day, consider Columbus in America from Films Media Group.

And for background on the native land that houses our campus read the college’s Land Acknowledgement which recognizes the college is located on land that was first known as Stone House Hill and Stone House Plain. Stone House Hill, the derivation of Stonehill College's name, is part of the Wampanoag tribe’s homeland.

For more information on issues of bias and exclusion in library catalogs, check out Radical Cataloging: Essays at the Front.

By: Maggie Timmoney