The End of LC Subject Headings?

Report on catalog revamp provokes strong reactions

By Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 5/15/2006

Should the Library of Congress (LC) jettison Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), the longstanding professional taxonomy? That’s one of the provocative suggestions in a new report released last month by LC. “The Changing Nature of the Catalog and Its Integration with Other Discovery Tools,” commissioned by LC and written by associate university librarian Karen Calhoun of Cornell University, was making waves weeks earlier, thanks to a critical review of a draft of her paper, written for AFSCME 2910, the LC Professional Guild, by Thomas Mann (author of The Oxford Guide to Library Research). It warned of “serious negative consequences for the capacity of research libraries to promote scholarly research.”

The summary in LC’s press release didn’t highlight LCSH but gave less controversial recommendations, e.g., reducing the costs of producing catalogs; enriching the catalog with Amazon-like features such as reviews and images; and offering rush delivery of materials and other services.

Michael Gorman, president of the American Library Association (ALA), speaking personally, responded with alarm. “I am utterly against the report and the steps already taken by LC (e.g., doing away with authority control for series without consultation or advance notice),” he said. “If LCSH were to be replaced by uncontrolled free-text searching, it would be a scholarly catastrophe.” Gorman, dean of library services at California State University, Fresno, said that he will personally “urge ALA to stand up for the importance of the cataloging standards for which LC has hitherto been known.”

Different strategies

Calhoun, who oversees the acquisition and cataloging of books, online library resources, and special-format materials for Cornell’s 20 libraries, has an MBA and a career history with OCLC, but she says the interviews with 23 experts—from libraries, vendors, and LIS schools—had the most significant influence on the report.

“Libraries are going to move at many different speeds,” Calhoun said, noting that the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) members for which the report is intended could participate in three potential strategies. The first, “Extend,” would involve improved interfaces and simplification of cataloging for libraries maintaining a local catalog for a locally housed and locally circulated collection. For the second, “Expand,” shared regional catalogs could serve more users.

For the most ambitious strategy, “Leadership,” Calhoun said, “There is no fully realized version anywhere. I think the Google Five [Stanford, Michigan, Harvard, and Oxford universities and New York Public Library] have some elements of what it’s going to take.” An aggregated supply of library resources on search engines like Google could then support speedy delivery of materials in multiple formats, including digital and print-on-demand.

Scholarship stifled?

Mann argued that the solutions proffered hamper scholarship, since scholars seek an overview of all relevant sources and wish to become aware of cross-disciplinary connections to their work.

LC associate librarian Deanna Marcum said, “Tom [Mann] quite rightly points to the superiority of doing searches the library way. He knows that people would get better information, more targeted information, if they used all the tools we made available.” However, she said, “Instead of trying to force the users into our systems, are there ways we can take our vast resources to where the users are?”

Changes in process

Marcum has been talking about changes in cataloging since she arrived at LC in August 2003. After the first year, she realigned library services, in part to streamline processes, and created a new directorate called Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access. In a 2004 address, Marcum mused, “But as we develop digital resources, the question arises: Do we need to provide detailed cataloging information for these digitized materials? Or can we think of Google as the catalog?”

Saul Schniderman, of LC’s professional union, said that Mann’s critical response to Calhoun’s report “reflects the viewpoint of the overwhelming majority of our members. You can only get so much out of the search box.”

Cataloging guru Sandy Berman, a longtime critic of the slowness of LC to adapt contemporary and colloquial terms, defended the LCSH concept and said he feared “bibliobarbarism.” Berman, who retired in 1999 from the Hennepin County Library, Minnetonka, MN, said, “The whole point, in terms of cost effectiveness, is to fully exploit a library’s collections. It is worth the extra time, effort, and expenditure to use a controlled vocabulary, keep it up-to-date, maintain cross references, and assign it with some intelligence and vigor.”

What Cornell does

Cornell, Calhoun said, “might be unique in the top 15 ARL libraries in that we have no backlog.” She said Cornell has not abandoned LCSH but has taken steps to reduce, for some categories of materials, the application of LCSH. Using rough numbers, she said that this year, 21 percent of Cornell’s cataloging was original as opposed to copy cataloging or added locations.

Of that 21 percent, she said the library applied full cataloging to one-third of the materials, core or minimal cataloging to another third, and classification on receipt—a temporary process that is later enhanced—to the final third. “It takes six months to a year to train someone in the complexities of how to use that controlled vocabulary. It’s very, very costly,” she said, noting that “by changing our practices, we were able to take part in new initiatives and growth into different service areas.”