HIST 491C / LAS 450/ AMS 490 / Africana 406: Race and Racism in the Americas (Spring 2024)

Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), created 1876. Still used by many public and school libraries, but largely abandoned by academic libraries in the late 20th century.

So what's the problem?

• On page 15 of the publication (24/57 of the PDF) 

• 290 is "other" religions.
  • Germanic religions (ex. Paganism, Norse) get 293
  • All "Indic religions" (ex Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism) share 294
  • Hinduism is 294.5
  • Zoroastrianism is 295
  • 299.6 is “religions originating among Black Africans and people of Black African descent.”
• Many white American biographies are listed between 930-990 in Modern History, while most African or African American writers are listed under 325 (Slavery) or 326 (Colonization).
• Similarly, histories of political leaders who are white are usually in the 900s (History) while Black people and immigrants are in the 300s (Social Sciences)

Improvements are made over time, but....

For these reasons, most academic and large public libraries use the Library of Congress Subject Headings and Call numbers, which is much better and progress is slow

It Still isn't perfect: librarians had to fight hard to change "slaves" to "enslaved persons" (2022)  and "illegal alien" to "Noncitizens" and "Unauthorized immigration" (2016) and "Tulsa Race Riot" to "tulsa Race Massacre" (2021).

Adler, Melissa. "Classification along the color line: Excavating racism in the stacks." Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, Jan. 2017.

Adler, Melissa and Harper, Lindsey M. "Race and Ethnicity in Classification Systems: Teaching Knowledge Organization from a Social Justice Perspective." Library Trends vol. 67, no.1, 2018, pp. 52-73.

Anderson, Jane and Kimberly Christensen. "Decolonizing attribution: Traditions of exclusion. Journal of Radical Librarianship, vol. 5, 2019, pp. 113-152. 

Change the Subject. Directed by Sawyer Broadley and Jill Baron, Dartmouth College, 2019.

Drabinski, Emily. "Teaching the radical catalog." Radical Cataloging: Essays at the Front, edited by K. R. Roberto, McFarland & Company, Inc., 2015, pp. 198-205.

Duarte, Marisa Elena and Miranda Belarde-Lewis. "Imagining: Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies." Cataloging and Classification Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 5-6, Apr. 2015, pp. 677–702.

Dudley, Michael Q. "A Library Matter of Genocide: The Library of Congress and the Historiography of the Native American Holocaust." International Indigenous Policy Journal, vol, 8, no. 2, 2017.

Fox, Melodie J. "'Priorities of arrangement’ or a ‘hierarchy of oppressions?’: Perspectives on intersectionality in knowledge organization." Knowledge Organization, vol. 43, no. 5, 2016, pp. 373-383. 

Furner, Jonathan. “Dewey Deracialized: A Critical Race-Theoretic Perspective.” Knowledge Organization, vol. 34, no. 3, 2007, pp. 144–68. 

Green, Rebecca. “Indigenous Peoples in the US, Sovereign Nations, and the DDC.” Knowledge Organization, vol. 42, no. 4, 2015, pp. 211–221. 

Higgins, Molly. “Totally Invisible: Asian American Representation in the Dewey Decimal Classification, 1876–1996.” Knowledge Organization, vol.43, no. 8, 2016, pp. 609–621. 

Howard, Sarah A.and Knowlton, Steven A. "Browsing through Bias: The Library of Congress Classification and Subject Headings for African American Studies and LGBTQIA Studies." Library Trends, vol. 67, no. 1, 2018, pp. 74-88.

Idrees, Haroon. “Organization of Islamic Knowledge in Libraries: The Role of Classification Systems.” Library Philosophy and Practice, vol. 63, no. 3, May 2013, pp. 98-117.

Knowlton, Steven A. “Three Decades since Prejudices and Antipathies: A Study of Changes in the Library of Congress Subject Headings.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, vol. 40, no. 2, Aug. 2005, pp. 123–145. 

Littletree, Sandra and Cheryl Metoyer. “Knowledge Organization from an Indigenous Perspective: The Mashantucket Pequot Thesaurus of American Indian Terminology Project.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, vol.53, no. 5–6, Apr. 2015, 640–57. 

McKennon, Ed. “Importing Hegemony: Library Information Systems and US Hegemony in Canada and Latin America.” Radical History Review, vol. 95, no. 95, 2006, pp. 45–69. 

Olson, Hope A. “Mapping beyond Dewey’s Boundaries: Constructing Classificatory Space for Marginalized Knowledge Domains.” Library Trends, vol. 47, no. 2, Sept. 1998, pp. 233–54.

Olson, Hope A. “Thinking Professionals: Teaching Critical Cataloguing.” Technical Services Quarterly, vol. 15, no. 1-2, Sept. 1997, pp. 51–66.

Olson, Hope A. “The Power to Name: Representation in Library Catalogs.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 26, no. 3, Apr. 2001, pp. 639–68.