Alper, Bianca Finley, Isaac Fellman, and Megan Needels. “The Uncontrolled Vocabulary: Queer Archiving and the Fluidity of Language.” Descriptive Notes: The blog of the Description Section of the Society of American Archivists, December 5, 2022.
Alper, Fellman, and Needels document their work at the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender (GLBT) Historical Society to reconsider the limited and anachronistic language of the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). For granular metadata terms, they rely on style guides from queer and Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Color (BIPOC) groups. To facilitate interoperability with other catalogs, they use Homosaurus and LCSH terms for generic subject headings. These terms did not override older ones used by members of the queer community; those terms were used within the description and notes, so they could be adequately contextualized for users. The authors emphasize that any changes to controlled vocabularies must keep in mind the ethics of their choices if they are to work against the restrictive precedents and systemic processes of any institution and collection. Likewise, they must remain fluid, adapting to emerging changes in definition within the communities they represent.