Project Description:

A large body of research and recorded experience has documented biases of gender, sexuality, race, age, ability, ethnicity, language and religion as limits to the expression of diversity in naming information for retrieval. This literature has resulted in changes, especially addressing acute manifestations of bias. However, the diffuse nature of this literature makes it difficult to diagnose the problems, particularly when addressing systemic biases in subject access standards. Our experience in searching for this literature has been an exercise in frustration brightened mainly by serendipity and the kindness of friends. The very problems that this literature discusses make it difficult to find.

The goal of our project is to identify existing research and reported experience relating to subject access for marginalized groups and topics with a view to providing the basis for addressing biases in established subject access standards. Organization of information has, historically, been based on standards that offer consistency. Consistency in representing information fulfils Cutter's gathering function. Standards used across libraries have also afforded efficiency in avoiding duplication of work. These standards, tending to represent the mainstream well and the margins poorly, are now being increasingly challenged. Earlier work, analysed in this project, addresses specific symptoms of subject access problems. Now researchers and professionals are beginning to ask more sweeping questions. For example, a panel at the American Library Association's 1998 annual conference discussed "one-size-fits-all" subject access in the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), and Yahoo!. This choice of systems is indicative of the transfer from traditional to recently-developed standards. Systemic problems are being replicated over and over again even though evidence exists that could be used to help avoid them. Unfortunately, that evidence is scattered and difficult to locate. This study is part of an ongoing effort to locate and synthesize this body of literature.

Our research is a meta-analysis intended to serve both theory and practice and to this end we have made the analysis available in the form of a database on the World Wide Web. It is intended that its immediate use will be to help practising library and information professionals understand the problems of the systems they use. Heuristics in searching, contextualized guides to collections and other measures can be developed by professionals as stop-gap measures. In the longer term, researchers and the professionals who develop standards for subject representation may use this evidence to better avoid harmful biases.

For fuller discussion of findings see:
Olson, Hope A., and Rose Schlegl. (2001). Critiques of subject access bias: A meta-analysis. Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 32(2): 61-80.
and
Olson, Hope A., and Rose Schlegl. (1999). Bias in subject access standards: A content analysis of the critical literature. In James Turner, ed., Information Science Where Has it Been, Where Is it Going? Proceedings of the 27th Annual Conference of the Canadian Association for Information Science, Université de Sherbrooke, June 9-11, 1999 / Les sciences de l’information: D’où viennent-elles et où s’en vont-elles? Actes du 27e Congrès annuel de l’Association canadienne pour les sciences de l’information, (pp. 236-247). [Montréal]: CAIS/ACSI.

These web pages were constructed by Rose Schlegl and updated by Shona Dippie.

List of Works Included