AASLIG Report - August 2021

This has been a very productive few months for the African American Subject Funnel Project. Co-Chairs Staci Ross and Michelle Cronquist were elected in March 2021 to lead cataloging efforts and increase member training. In August, the membership unanimously elected two Chairs: Erica Bruchko and Jina DuVernay, both AASLIG members who bring subject expertise to funnel leadership. 

 

Staci and Michelle conducted member training and gave two heavily-attended national presentations this summer. As a direct result of these efforts, both membership and member participation have increased. Additionally, Michelle has steadily been building strong ties with Library of Congress specialists involved with LCSH. Her actions directly contributed to virtual LCSH Editorial Meetings becoming truly open (since July 2021). Since the Coordinator role remains vacant, Staci has focused on continuing the work of Dr. Gemmicka Piper to strengthen the funnel's workflows and infrastructure for continuity. 

New Headings Added

 

• Night riding (Racial violence)

• Scope note: Here are entered works on violence and intimidation against African Americans that was carried out by vigilantes under the cover of darkness and/or in disguise, an activity that began in the 19th century.

• Night riders

• Scope note: Here are entered works on vigilantes who commit acts of intimidation and violence under cover of darkness and/or in disguise, generally against African Americans, in order to punish or terrorize their victims.
• During the editing process, the Library of Congress changed this record to make it more general in scope and not focused on violence against African Americans.  We successfully challenged their changes and the heading was approved in the form that we wanted.
• Our proposal for the broader term Vigilantes--United States was also successful.

• Racism against Blacks

• Our unsuccessful proposal to change the scope note for Racism led the Library of Congress to allow proposals for Racism against [ethnic group].

Changed Headings

 

• Colorism

• Added reference for "Shadeism" and others

• Call number cutter change: .N4 >> .B5

• We proposed a change from PN1995.9.N4 (where the .N4 stands for Negroes) to PN1995.9.B585 (where the .B585 stands for Black people).  This led to the Library of Congress cancelling 40 cutter numbers based on Negroes and replacing them with cutters based on Black people, as described in the Summary of Decisions for June 2021.

• Juneteenth

• Added several references for variant names for the holiday.

 

In Progress

• Headings submitted and not yet approved

• Environmental racism
• Slave auctions
• Slave marriage
• Slave markets
• Great Migration, ca. 1914-ca. 1970
• African American barbershops
• Rhythm Club Fire, Natchez, Miss., 1940

• Blacks/Whites change to Black people/White people

• We are working on a project to change the LCSH term Blacks to Black people, as well as the corresponding term Whites to White people.  The Library of Congress has given preliminary approval to this change, and we have distributed the work of updating 100+ records among several Funnel members.

 

Other Activities

• Co-chairs Michelle Cronquist and Staci Ross have prioritized training and internal documentation for our members. They conducted a training for developing proposals on June 8, 2021. Soon after, members who had not proposed on their own before developed 7 new heading proposals (see section In Progress >> Headings submitted and not yet approved).

 

Outreach & Presentations

 

• Co-chairs Staci Ross and Michelle Cronquist were invited to speak on the Funnel as part of the RUSA webinar "Decolonizing the Catalog: Anti-Racist Description Practices from Authority Records to Discovery Layers" on July 7, 2021.
• Staci and Michelle also delivered the presentation "Black Subject Headings in LCSH: Successes and Challenges of the African American Subject Funnel Project" for the Cataloging and Classification Research Interest Group as part of Core Interest Group week on July 28, 2021.
• 4 new members (catalogers) joined as a result of both presentations.

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Tahirah Akbar-Williams
African American Studies & College of Education Librarian
University of Maryland, College Park
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