Library of Congress Subject Headings - LCSH Policy Issues

LCSH Policy Issues

Historically, issues have revolved around the terms employed to describe racial or ethnic groups. Notable has been the terms used to describe African-Americans. Until the 1990s, the LCSH administrators had a strict policy of not changing terms for a subject category. This was enforced to tighten and eliminate the duplication or confusion that might arise if subject headings were changed. Therefore, one term to describe African-American topics in LCSH was ‘Afro-American’ long after that term lost currency and acceptance in the population. LCSH decided to allow some alteration of terms in 1996 to better reflect the needs and access of library users. Nevertheless, many common terms, or ‘natural language’ terms are not used in LCSH, and may in effect limit the ability for users to locate items. There is a growing tradition of research in Library and Information Science faculties about the cultural and gender biases that affect the terms used in LCSH, which in turn may limit or deprive library users access to information stored and disseminated in collections. A notable American Library Science scholar on this subject is Sanford Berman.