[Please forgive cross-posting]
Dear colleagues:
The Library of Congress has, as of yesterday, circulated an announcement and an FAQ about discontinuing the use of $v (form subdivisions) in new cataloging.
In the interest of transparency, it should be known that questions in the FAQ were taken, largely verbatim, from a set prepared by the ALA Subject Analysis Committee's Working Group on $v Retention, endorsed by multiple library organizations, and sent to the Library of Congress on September 15, 2025. The complete set of questions and signatories can be seen here. While we are glad that the Library of Congress responded to our questions, it is disappointing that the answers were not provided before a final decision on $v was made, and before the library community, which has a substantial stake in the development and usage of Library of Congress vocabularies, could fully understand the implications of this change and weigh in.
Further, the answers provided within the announcement and FAQ raise further questions. We urge our colleagues to carefully scrutinize the information in those documents:
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no future development of $v allowed (i.e., no possibility of $v Young adult fiction, or $v Kits, or anything else the community still using $v might feel necessary and useful)
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the potential "modification" (i.e., removal?) of $v in already existing authority records
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no guarantee of retention of either documentation or authorities related to $v long-term
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no planned replacement of incredibly popular audience-inclusive $v (e.g., for children's and YA materials) with LCGFT alternatives
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no consultation with the library community about which $v will receive LCGFT alternatives or in what form
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undercutting of search and display functionality currently existent in a majority of libraries, in favor of fields and functions (655, and particularly 3XX) largely unavailable in library catalogs for post-coordinated searching at this time, and potentially unable to be implemented in the future
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scant acknowledgment of the impact on patrons of the lack of "high-level consistency for many terms" in library catalogs, particularly for historic records lacking LCGFT and/or LCDGT
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and so on
The Working Group has been assessing the ramifications of the discontinuation of $v on library collections, catalogs, services, and-most importantly-library patrons. We are currently drafting our report, including results of a librarian survey which garnered 699 responses across all library types (academic, public, school, tribal, special, governmental, consortial, etc.), and from several countries. We intend to circulate the report widely when completed, hopefully by the end of January, and we hope that the library community and particularly its member organizations will consider our evidence and recommendations.
We respectfully request that the Library of Congress delay implementing this change and finalizing a decision on $v before the release of the report, and the gathering of input and addressing of concerns from the library community.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Deborah Tomaras, chair of ALA SAC Working Group on $v Retention
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Deborah Tomaras
Metadata and Resource Management Librarian
Marist University, James A. Cannavino Library
She/Her/Hers
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