Conceptualizing a Future for Library Classification

Wisdom in Education Volume 5 Issue 2 Article 3 11-1-2015 Conceptualizing a Future for Library Classification Risa M. Lumley California State University, San Bernardino Palm Desert, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/wie Part of the Higher Education Commons, and the Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education Commons Recommended Citation Lumley, Risa M. (2015) "Conceptualizing a Future for Library Classification," Wisdom in Education: Vol. 5 : Iss. 2 , Article 3. Available at: https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/wie/vol5/iss2/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by CSUSB ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Wisdom in Education by an authorized editor of CSUSB ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Conceptualizing a Future for Library Classification Abstract This paper traces the roots of the positivist epistemology of librarianship; its ideals of neutrality and access as they intersect in the classification and assignment of library subject headings; and the notion of the author as it relates to the creation of library authority files. By legitimizing their own professional neutrality, librarians have wielded tremendous power over what libraries collect as well as how those works are represented, but have done so with little self-reflection. The act of classifying works and assigning subject headings is not a neutral process. It is time for librarians to use new tools such as the RDA standards to hold academic libraries accountable for assessing their collections to ensure they represent the diversity of voices that comprise the full record and collective history of our culture. Keywords Academic Libraries; Collection Development; Classification of Books; nowledgeK Organization Author Statement Risa M. Lumley is the librarian at the Palm Desert Campus of California State University, San Bernardino and is pursuing a doctorate in Educational Leadership at CSUSB. This article is available in Wisdom in Education: https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/wie/vol5/iss2/3 Lumley: Conceptualizing Library Classification For years, the research library has been schemes. These access points have revered as a depository of objective traditionally included the title of the work, the knowledge that scientists and scholars had author, and the subject(s) of the work. captured in the structure of their language and According to the American Library preserved as manuscripts, books, articles, and Association, "Librarians have a professional other texts. These artifacts of knowledge were obligation to ensure that all library users have then coded and cataloged and put on shelves free and equal access to the entire range of in an organized manner alongside other library services, materials, and programs," manuscripts by other scholars and scientists (American Library Association, 2008). (Radford, 1992). The library was built on the However, equal access to library materials has belief in the existence of a scientifically- been impeded by bias in subject cataloging, derived and classifiable body of knowledge, both in major classification schemes such as and as keepers of the library, librarians have the Library of Congress Classification (LCC) historically derived much of their professional and in controlled subject vocabularies such as status from their adherence to, and the Library of Congress Subject Headings maintenance of, the positivist epistemology (LCSH), which “reflect the Eurocentric, male, (Bales & Engle, 2012; Harris, 1986). By Christian orientations of their originators as legitimizing their own professional neutrality, well as the time period in which they were librarians have wielded tremendous power constructed” (Tomren, 2003, p. 3). over what libraries collect and how those From the very beginning of their works are represented, but have done so with profession, librarians have relied upon little self-reflection. culturally reified experts and “tastemakers” to This paper will trace the roots of the assist in their decisions about what to collect positivist epistemology of librarianship, and and preserve and which books and journals to the ideals of neutrality and access as they buy. These decisions are inevitably biased, intersect in the classification and assignment based as they are on the judgments and of subject headings to the collection, and in interests of individual university faculty and the positivist notion of the author as it relates librarians and upon the publishing industry, to the creation of library authority files. The itself an elite corps, where males outnumber act of classifying works and assigning subject females among reviewers, reviewed, and headings cannot be a neutral process. And in published authors, and where white authors this postmodern era, it is time to resurrect the write 90% of the books reviewed in major author as more than a single access point in publications (Morales, Knowles & Bourg, the catalog. 2014). These conditions privilege some books The library profession in the United States and some users of them, while marginalizing has traditionally conceptualized the library’s others (Raber, 2003). That academic library role in terms of two democratic ideals: access collections are hegemonic of the dominant and neutrality. “Ideally, the library has no discourse will be assumed in this paper. vested interest in the content of its materials” Pointing the way forward toward holding (Radford, 1992, p. 412); it simply facilitates academic libraries and librarians accountable access to texts, which enable scholars and for redressing this fact via the modification of students to build upon and add to the existing classification schemes is the purpose knowledge discovered by others in the of this exploration. manner of the scientific method. Yet The standards and practices of how librarians are not only responsible for knowledge is described and organized dictate selecting the items which make up the the ways in which resources in library library’s collection, but also for creating access collections are discovered and used (Morales, points to the collection via classification Knowles, & Bourg, 2014), and many theorists 1 Published by CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2015 1 Wisdom in Education, Vol. 5 [2015], Iss. 2, Art. 3 recognize that librarians have the potential to Not only is LCC ubiquitous in the United make progressive reforms to society (Raber, States where it originated, but its reach is now 2003), if they would only break free of the global. As libraries worldwide have begun “contradictory theoretical consciousness” and interacting with each other and sharing hegemonic norms that hold them back from resources online, the need for standardized doing so (Bales & Engle, 2012, p. 22). Louis cataloging practices has become necessary, Althusser (2009), in particular, felt that and the LCC has served as the framework. librarians had a “social and moral Librarians have responded to the need for responsibility” to challenge the hegemonic standardized cataloging practices by practices of the academic library, and to establishing cooperative consortia in which contribute to the creation of authentic cataloging departments from all over the knowledge and history, not simply the world contribute their records to, and take indoctrination of the canon (Bales & Engle, their records from, shared databases. An 2012). Librarians, he posited, offer a aspect of these standardized cataloging potentially progressive and transforming practices is the maintenance of authority service, but they do so in a context that control. Authority control derives from the preserves their self-interest and liberal identity idea that the names of people, places, things, within the capitalist hegemony, thus allowing and concepts are authorized, meaning they are them to dismiss the need for critical self- established in one particular form. In the examination” (Raber, 2003, p. 50). Academic United States, the primary organization for librarians, especially, face the paradox that maintaining cataloging standards with respect even as their collections support academic to authority control is the Library of freedom, they do so from hegemonic Congress, an institution of the U.S. perspectives (Bales & Engle, 2012). government funded by U.S. tax dollars. The Classification, together with indexing, Library of Congress is not only the research document description, and metadata library that officially serves the United States assignment, form the basis of knowledge Congress, but is also regarded as the national organization (KO), and has been carried out library of the United States (Cole, 1994). It is in libraries for over a hundred years. the oldest federal cultural institution in the Knowledge organization in turn supports United States, and now its authority over the information retrieval (IR). However, the representation of knowledge is global. future for these both of these library The purpose of global classification functions is being challenged by digital becomes to represent things as they really are, technologies. A shift is taking place from free of cultural bias. To accomplish this, classification as ontology, in which everything however, it is necessary to regard documents is defined as it is, to a contemporary notion of as containers of information which can be classification as epistemology, in which analyzed and described neutrally and everything is interpreted as it could be (Mai, scientifically by following

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