The Library of Congress (LC) and the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) interpretation of Resource Description and Access (RDA) 9.7 regarding gender when identifying persons reinforces regressive conceptions of gender identity. The rule instructs catalogers to record gender when identifying persons, and although RDA gives catalogers the flexibility to record more than two gender labels, LC limits Name Authority Cooperative Program (NACO) catalogers to a binary label: male, female, or not known. In this article, the authors challenge gender as a descriptive attribute for personal names, critique how LC is instructing NACO catalogers to record elements about gender, and make recommendations to address describing persons in LC authority records.
The paper presents the first world catalogue of the millipede order Callipodida (Diplopoda: Helminthomorpha). The order is currently known to comprise 3 suborders, 7 families, 35 valid (sub-)genera and 133 (sub-)species. Furthermore, 10 nominal species, whose taxonomic status has not been considered in any publications other than the first descriptions, are listed as species inquirenda. The synonymy of Paracortina wangi Stoev, 2004 under Angulifemur unidigitis Zhang, 1997 is formalized here. Given for each (sub-)species are the original description with author, year, pages and figures; complete chronological list of subsequent faunistic or taxonomic references; type material and, if known, current repository; type locality; species range; and sometimes additional remarks on its status or distribution. The relevant taxonomic and faunistic literature on Diplopoda was consulted to complete the data presented here. The species list is based on a species index card catalogue housed in the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris (“Fichier iconographiqueBrolemann et successeurs”), with additions from the Zoological Record and various on-line resources. A bibliography containing 286 taxonomic references relevant to the Callipodida is included.
Discovery tools offer users a powerful way of searching library holdings, as well as external databases and indexes. They are becoming an increasingly common part of the library user experience, and research on the usability of such tools is expanding. In 2012, a mid-sized academic research library implemented Primo Discovery and Delivery by Ex Libris and conducted a diagnostic usability test to investigate how the tool is used without instruction, to discover patterns in searching behavior, and to uncover how compatible Primo is with user search behavior. This paper will describe the design and implementation of the usability study. Despite some design flaws, users adapt to the tool over time and can perform effective searches. This paper also provides recommendations for future usability studies in specific targeted areas where problems were detected.
When a library adds a book to its collection, it adds a surrogate record for that book in the library's catalog. To get this record the library will either download it or create a record for the book from an international bibliographic record database. Authors have records too. These are known as name authority records. Recently the standards for creating these records changed to allow library catalogers to record more personal information about authors in authority records. This includes information about gender. There began a collective effort by a handful of catalogers to revise the new instructions so that binary gender was not encoded into the metadata of library records. This paper outlines the developments, results, and implications of this work.
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