Canadian Materials and the Library of Congress
Library and Archives Canada developed the FC Class and Canadian Subject Headings in order to ensure that Canadian life and culture could be accurately represented while still using Library of Congress Subject Headings and Library of Congress Classification. To illustrate the problems inherent when nations and cultures outside of the US adopt LCC and LCSH, we present the following study.
Hope Olsen and Rosie Schlegel identify five categories of “negative bias” that affect the Library of Congress Subject Headings and Library of Congress Classification [2]. They are:
- Exception: The treatment of a topic as existing outside the norm for no good reason. This comes into play with the classification of literature by language.
Example: LC has the subject heading Women teachers but not Men teachers. Men are always assumed to be the default.
- Ghettoization: The isolation of a topic rather than the integration into current or existing schemes.
Example: Works on Native Peoples of North America are usually classed in E, for History--American,
which infers that native cultures are things of the past [3].
- Omission: The lack of adequate subject headings or vocabulary to address either a topic in general, or a complex variation on a simple topic already represented in LCSH.
Example: The Quebec sovereignty movement, in all of its various permutations, is not adequately represented by a single LC Subject Heading. The subject heading Quebec (Province)--History--Autonomy and independence movements hardly seems adequate, as this one subject heading encompasses works on everything concerning separatism from the Quiet Revolution to current actions of the Bloc Quebecois.
- Problems of Structure: This problem most often arises when cultural institutions do not conform to North American convention, meaning that subject headings and concepts do no fit together.
LCC does not include appropriate specificity to deal with kinship structures that are more complex than the “traditional” North American concept of family.
Example: The HQ class (The Family. Marriage. Home.) cannot express familial relationships that are significant in some cultures, such as maternal relatives, paternal relatives, and first-born children [4].
- Biased terminology: The use of outdated, inappropriate, or objectifying language to address persons and concepts.
Examples: Miscegenation. Indians of North America.
The following are some specific ways that LCSH and LCC fail the Canadian cataloguer and library user.
Different Countries and Cultures
“…a melting pot, not a mosaic” [5]
Despite President Jimmy Carter’s optimistic view of America as a “beautiful mosaic” of cultures, it is apparent that the Library of Congress has not embraced this view when it comes to subject headings and classification [6].
This trend is perhaps most apparent when assigning LC Subject Headings to works about the literature of a particular country. Both Dewey Decimal Classification and Library of Congress Classification place the emphasis on the language of a work, rather than the national or ethnic affiliations of the author. As a result, many library catalogues find works on Canadian literature split between the LC subject headings Canadian literature and French-Canadian literature. The primacy of language in classification and subject analysis in the LC system prevents effective subject analysis of works produced by citizens of bilingual countries like Canada.
Languages Other Than English
The United States is officially a monolingual nation, so the Library of Congress Subject Headings are only available in English. Some alternatives to the English-only LCSH are available, including the Spanish Bilindex and French Répertoire de vedettes-matière (the French-language version of the Canadian Subject Headings). These lists of subject headings also cater to local/cultural practice in a way that LCSH cannot approximate for the English-speaking world [7].
Inappropriate Terminology
One of the most high-profile problems with LCSH and LCC is the antiquated and colonialist treatment of native or aboriginal peoples [8]. All indigenous inhabitants of North America are lumped under the LC Subject Heading Indians of North America. In addition, various tribes and cultures are often classed alphabetically in the E99 (Tribes and cultures) class, lumped together and "ghettoized” rather than holistically integrated into the scheme as a whole [9].
Geographic Headings
Since Library of Congress Subject Headings have evolved and are designed to specifically address the needs of the Library of Congress collections, there are significant problems related to geographic names in subject headings.
For example, it is not unusual for an authorized LC Subject Heading to exist for an obscure American town with only one item associated with the geographic heading.
The following American places have authorized LC Subject Headings:
- Oakley, California: Oakley (Calif.)
- Contoocook, New Hampshire: Contoocook (Hopkinton, N.H.)
- Antelope, Oregon: Antelope (Or.)
Because the Library of Congress is not actively collecting Canadian materials, there are fewer opportunities to create new Canadian geographic headings in a timely manner and on a regular basis.
Events
Library of Congress Subject Headings often fail to address events of importance to nations and cultures that are not well-represented in LC collections. Examples of Canadian events that are not adequately represented by Library of Congress Subject Headings include:
- The Annual New Year’s Day Polar Bear Swim in Vancouver
- The Nootka Sound Controversy
- The Civil Service Strike of 1996
- The 1936 Moose River (Nova Scotia) mine disaster
- The Pacific Scandal
- The Montreal Massacre
Persons, Places, and Things
Library of Congress Subject Headings also often lack coverage of people and things of importance in Canada, including:
- The Girl Guides
- RRSPs
- Newfoundlanders
- The National Energy Program
In the next section, we discuss how the Canadian Subject Headings attempt to address these problems.
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