Report of the SAC Working Group on LCDGT

SAC15-MID/6 Report of the SAC Working Group on LCDGT The Working Group on LCDGT (Library of Congress Demographic Group Terms) was organized after Annual (with Liz Bodian as Chair) and has been holding its discussions over email the past few months. We have not received a formal charge with updated precise questions for the group to consider, but based on Janis’s original LCDGT discussion paper and minutes of subsequent SAC discussions we knew of some outstanding issues. In November we sent Janis some follow-up questions and received some helpfully detailed responses. In mid- January, Liz sent a further summary of our discussion to Janis Young, which this report updates somewhat. We were not able to reach as many conclusions as we had hoped, but had some fruitful discussions. We are hoping that SAC will be able to help us resolve some of our lingering issues. The main outstanding LCDGT topics as we understand them are: 1) What language speaker groups should be established? 2) To what level of geographic granularity should demonyms be established? (continent, region, nation, sub-national region, state, city, etc.) 3) How should American and Non-American ethnic groups, including those “hyphenated” group terms consisting of two nationality terms, be handled? (i.e. Chinese Americans, Japanese Brazilians)

As we discussed question 1, the group’s initial feeling was that it was difficult to prioritize languages and therefore all established LCSH languages should be included in LCDGT, following the structure “Speakers of [language]” (as opposed to “[Language] speakers”). We also wondered whether some hierarchy could be useful here, including terms for language families. Janis agreed with using the “Speakers of [language]” form but pointed out good reasons for not comprehensively including all LCSH languages or for implementing language hierarchies in LCDGT: There are approximately 4,400 languages and dialects established in LCSH; the sheer number makes it prohibitive to copy all of them into LCDGT. (The exact number as of October 8, 2014 was 4,390, and we’ve added several more since then.) Some of the languages established in LCSH are extinct and have been for quite some time, so it’s very unlikely that a work would be written by a speaker of the language, or for speakers of the language. Not all of the headings for extinct languages have the BT Extinct languages, so it’s impossible to easily exclude them from LCDGT. Some of the extant languages established in LCSH are spoken by only a very few people (earlier this year we received a proposal for a language spoken by six people worldwide). It’s again unlikely that a library would ever receive a work written by a speaker of such a language, or written for speakers of the language. Many of the language headings established in LCSH are problematic because the heading is in an intellectually outdated form, or the references are outdated or incomplete. In addition, some of the older headings include terminology that is considered pejorative by the speakers of the language. We do not have time to investigate and correct every language heading in LCSH, but we also do not want to perpetuate the problems in LCDGT. Language hierarchies might be problematic, mostly because the names of the groupings aren’t in common use (except perhaps by linguists). Swahili is in the Volta-Congo grouping, for example, but it’s unlikely that someone is going to come into a library looking for a book with an audience or creator defined as Speakers of Volta-Congo languages. Plus, there are again problems with LCSH. Some subgroupings are established in LCSH, and some are not, and it’s not consistent across the board.

Janis then forwarded us the spreadsheet Ed O’Neill generated from WorldCat of how frequently languages are used in the database and an email analysis of the results by Adam Schiff. We felt the best course is to start by including in LCDGT all the languages Ed found in one or more Worldcat records. This would get us both very common languages and more unusual ones, but would ensure that they were languages that are actually addressed in bib records.

For question 2, we note that if we only use demonyms already established in LCSH, we can't go much beyond the national level. One proposal (and nobody had any others or seemed to argue with this one) was to do as follows: -->all current nationalities in LCSH (e.g., Danes, Spanish, Cubans) -->all past nationalities in LCSH (Czechoslovaks, Soviets (People), Gauls, Britons) -->demonyms in LCSH for people who are defined by a continent -->demonyms in LCSH for people who are defined by a geographic place (past or present) larger than a country but smaller than a continent (e.g., Basques, Middle Easterners, South Asians, Southeast Asians, Pacific Islanders, Polynesians) -->demonyms in LCSH for people who are defined by sub-national region (past or present) smaller than a country (e.g., Alsatians, Normans, Corsicans, Bavarians)

Based on past SAC discussions and Janis’s November responses to the group, it also seems useful to include demonyms for US states, though these are not yet included in LCSH. We did find some lists of demonyms (in Wikipedia and elsewhere) which could be good starting points. Another option we discussed was using the phrase “Residents of [Place],” especially for ambiguous demonyms and for places for which there is no accepted demonym, but this may not lend itself to easy searching. Janis pointed out there are some American regional demonyms in LCSH already such as “New Englanders” that could be useful for LCDGT; we note that other potential regional groups like “Southerners” or “Midwesterners” might require qualifiers like “(United States)”.

Question 3 generated the most discussion. We spent a long time discussing how to categorize the component parts of the ethnic group terms containing a mix of ethnicity and nationality terms (as well as nouns and adjectives). We were drawn to the idea of separating ethnicity and nationality into distinct subfields but Janis in November helpfully elaborated on the issues involved:

The authorities for the terms themselves will be coded with their grouping. For example, a term for an occupation will look something like this:

010 ## $a [LCCN] 072 #7 $a occ $2 lcdgt 150 ## $a Teachers 450 ## $a Educators 550 ## $w g $a School employees

For a nationality,

010 ## $a [LCCN] 072 #7 $a nat $2 lcdgt 150 ## $a Americans

For an ethnic group,

010 ## $a [LCCN] 072 #7 $a eth $2 lcdgt 150 ## $a Seneca Indians 550 ## $w g $a Iroquois Indians

In the work or expression record (bib or authority), only the $a and $2 will be used:

100 1# $a Winklebauer, Holly. 245 10 $a Musings on the nursing profession / $c Holly Winklebauer, R.N. 386 ## $a Nurses $2 lcdgt 650 #0 $a Nursing.

The genre/form group discussed the possibility of defining separate subfields for each type of term (e.g., nationality, occupation), and rejected it.

The problem with ethnic groups occurs when the ethnic group includes both an ethnicity and a nationality, such as Chinese Americans or African Americans. Do we not worry about it, and simply use the common wording, coding it an ethnic group? Do we code the authority record 072 as both (e.g., 072 #7 $a eth $a nat $2 lcdgt)? Or do we split them up somehow?

The problem with splitting the phrase into two terms, Chinese and Americans, is that not all Chinese Americans identify as Chinese (although their parents might identify that way, if they were born in China). And some people who identify themselves as Chinese Americans might not be American citizens. My Chinese American friends would probably argue that Chinese American is its own ethnic identity, distinct to one extent or another from both Chinese and Americans. The ethnic group African Americans shows this very well. I don’t think most African Americans would identify themselves as Africans, although I could be wrong. In addition, in common usage the phrase seems to refer to blacks who have been in the United States for a long time, probably since the time of slavery, not to current immigrants, who seem to be more likely to refer to themselves by a more specific term such as Nigerian American.

On the other hand, the problem with keeping the phrase as it appears in common use is that we can identify clear patterns for American subgroups. But do people of Japanese ethnicity in Brazil even call themselves Japanese Brazilians? And what about Turkish people in Germany? Are they Turkish Germans?

Do we do something different for American groupings than for those of other countries, much as LCSH does? Or is there some other way to handle this?

Our group has not yet been able to consider thoroughly all of Janis’s points on this question but is in favor of making all LCSH nationality and ethnic group terms available in LCDGT (either by including them directly there or having a rule that such LCSH terms are valid in LCDGT). This means that many American ethnic groups would be included (see the many narrower terms in LCSH under “Ethnology—United States”) but not yet non-American group terms like “Japanese Brazilians” which could be proposed as warrant necessitates and justifies. We recommend leaving to cataloger judgment the issue of whether to apply these terms in cases where the author’s self-identification with the categories is unknown. For audiences, it would have to be explicit on the piece that it was intended for such-and-such a group, so the same principle would apply.

Questions for SAC:

1. Should we use all of the languages found in at least one Worldcat record per Ed O’Neill’s list, or identify an arbitrary cut-off point (i.e. top 50, any language in 10 or more records)? Janis says it will be easy to add terms, so it’s not crucial to be all inclusive from the outset.

2. Does SAC still agree that individually establishing demonyms for US states is worthwhile? Should the Working Group proceed with identifying existing state demonyms and using “Residents of [state]” when no common existing demonym exists?

3. Does SAC agree with the approach of including in LCDGT the existing LCSH headings for ethnic groups (i.e. Chinese Americans, African Americans, Cherokee Indians, Kurds) and nationalities (Chinese, Greeks) in LCDGT, without trying to split up hybrid terms into their component parts? Authority record 072s for ethnic group terms would have $a eth only? Authority records 072s for nationality terms would have $a nat only?

4. Does SAC agree with allowing non-US ethnic group terms not in LCSH (i.e. hybrid terms like Japanese Brazilians) to be omitted from LCDGT at the outset with the possibility of adding specific terms as warrant necessitates?

5. Should the Working Group start putting together lists of ethnic groups and nationalities from LCSH, or could LC or OCLC generate such a list in an automated way as Ed did with the language use list?