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Perhaps the greatest power of folksonomies, especially when set against controlled vocabularies like the Library of Congress Subject Headings, lies in their capacity to empower user communities to name their own resources in their own terms. This article analyzes the potential and limitations of both folksonomies and controlled vocabularies for transgender materials by analyzing the subject headings in WorldCat records and the user-generated tags in LibraryThing for books with transgender themes. A close examination of the subject headings and tags for twenty books on transgender topics reveals a disconnect between the language used by people who own these books and the terms authorized by the Library of Congress and assigned by catalogers to describe and organize transgender-themed books. The terms most commonly assigned by users are far less common or non-existent in WorldCat. The folksonomies also provide spaces for a multiplicity of representations, including a range of gender expressions, whereas these entities are often absent from Library of Congress Subject Headings and WorldCat. While folksonomies are democratic and respond quickly to shifts and expansions of categories, they lack control and may inhibit findability of resources. Neither tags nor subject headings

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This paper contends that systemic violence is fundamentally a classification problem. The interrogation of the production of racialized library subjects in relation to one another and in relation to political and social conditions may shed light on the intensely complex problems of racism in the United States today. I discuss the ways that sections of library classifications were constructed based on ideas about African Americans in relation to American social and political agendas. My claim is that the structures that were written in the late 19th and early 20th centuries are deeply embedded in our libraries and have participated in the naturalization of certain racialized assumptions and associations. In the 21st century we continue to maintain, apply, and refine a flawed structure. My aim is to provide a window into how epistemic violence affects American consciousness about race by revealing some of the ways that our library classifications have been woven together by men who cited and informed one another and ultimately, organized and universalized American history. These classifications are structured around assertions about timeless and fixed national values constructed out of progressive conceptualizations of the nation and its citizenry. A reliance on racial exclusion was necessary for this grand narrative, and scientific theories and classifications provided legitimacy and fuel for racist programs. One of key ways that exclusion was legitimated and supported was through the application of evolutionary theory and principles. Social engineering, white supremacy, and conquest were justified and propelled by beliefs in the evolutionary superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race. It is not by accident that these ideas became foundational to classificatory practice in libraries. In fact, Thomas Dousa has drawn attention to the intellectual climate in which late 19th century library classificationists worked-particularly, the theories and classifications of the sciences and nature as devised by Auguste Compte, Herbert Spencer, and Charles 2 Darwin-and argues that these ideas and systems inspired the introduction of evolutionary principles into bibliographic classifications. The present paper is in agreement with Dousa's claim and argues that such a conclusion carries critical implications for understanding libraries' classifications of race and ethnicity. Emphasis is placed is on the legacy of the classification of books about people of African descent as variously named and conceptualized in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The last section of the paper examines the performativity of classifications to examine some of the processes by which racism has become systemic on library shelves.

She earned her PhD in library and information studies, with a minor in gender and women's studies in 2012 from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She studies processes of disciplining and resistance in classifications and names, and the roles of such practices in knowledge production. She is currently examining discourses of interdisciplinary fields that study marginalized populations, such as critical animal studies, disability studies, queer studies, and critical race studies.

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Classification and the organization of information are directly connected to issues surrounding social justice, diversity, and inclusion. This paper is written from the standpoint that political and epistemological aspects of knowledge organization are fundamental to research and practice and suggests ways to integrate social justice and diversity issues into courses on the organization of information. classification systems/adler & harper 53 We begin by way of example to illustrate how categories and classification are connected to other areas of research in LIS. The Library of Congress catalog records (consulted in July 2018) for recently published books on social justice and race in librarianship provide some clues about where the field of LIS stands with regard to these issues. These examples show possibilities and limitations of subject standards in providing access, and they provide windows into an intersectional analysis of subjects. First, the catalog record for Where Are All the Librarians of Color?: The Experiences of People of Color in Academia, edited by Rebecca Hankins and Miguel Juárez (2016), reveals some particularly interesting insights. The record stands in contrast to the book description, which reads: This edited volume addresses the shared experiences of academic librarians of color, i.e. Hispanic Americans, African Americans, Native Americans and Asian Americans. These experiences are very similar and offer a narrative that explains the lack of librarians of color in academia, especially those librarians that have experienced the daunting academic tenure process.

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