Karen Snow, Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, Dominican University; and Elizabeth Shoemaker, Rare Book Cataloger, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, & Rare Book Library, Emory University are conducting a survey concerning the role ethics plays in cataloging library and archival materials.
"The purpose of this study is to explore cataloger perceptions of cataloging ethics, what they feel are the important ethical issues they face, and how they choose to address ethical issues in their work."
Please take the survey.
This was one of the top search results for "critical cat," so good job with metadata, GIPHY.
Here's how I answered some of their open-ended questions.
First, I define cataloging ethics as making library items and materials, either owned or leased, discoverable, findable, and searchable
1. Using language that promotes equity and inclusion
2. Taking the political economy of copyright and intellectual property into account by recognizing that ethical use and laws may be in conflict
3. Respecting the right of subalterns and historically marginalized groups' and peoples' right to privacy, as exemplified by Tara Robertson's work on zine cataloging.
Most of my cataloging work is of the copy- variety, so I rarely encounter ethical issues in the wild outside of adding keywords in the 650 fields to make items more discoverable. However, I've been tasked with acquiring and cataloging materials relating to grit and resilience, especially those that would promote these concepts. I also purchased materials that took a different approach and made sure that these were discoverable by people looking for the originally requested purchases.
Elsewhere, I've noted that some Library of Congress Subject Headings are contested sites, and used multiple terms in local records. Radical Cataloging may be of some use here as well.
How do you define and practice cataloging ethics?
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