Behind the Curtain: How Library of Congress Vocabulary Terms Are Created and Maintained
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Abstract
The Library of Congress (LC) maintains a set of controlled vocabulary terms that are used to describe and promote the discovery of materials through library catalogs and online databases around the world. But how are these terms added and maintained, and what determines which term is the “authorized” heading displayed to researchers and other users? Intended as an overview for non-librarians, this presentation attempts to remove the mystery surrounding these processes and discuss some of the current forces, such as critical cataloging, metadata remediation and the political climate, on LC vocabulary terms.
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Presented as part of the panel, Unveiling the Fictions, Politics, and Distortions in the Scholarly Information Ecosystem, at the 2025 annual conference of the American Folklore Society in Atlanta, Georgia.
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Library of Congress Subject Headings, Metadata remediation, Harmful language
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This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND: You are free to copy and redistribute the material in any format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original creator and provide a link to the license. You may not use this work for commercial purpose. If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/