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By: Jessamyn West,
on 10/28/2007
Blog:
librarian.net
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On my fridge I have a photocopy of a letter that Sandy Berman sent to the Library of Congress this August suggesting that they establish dildoes as a LCSH. I got many fascinating photocopies along with it for supporting evidence. I enjoy being on Sandy’s mailing list. Today, vickiep from del.ico.us sent me a link to “strap-on sex” as a new Library of Congress subject heading. Hooray! Unfortunately, links that go into the Library of Congress Authorities searches aren’t permanent but I was able to replicate the search and find the listing for dildoes in the weekly list for September 26th. Of interest to me particularly is that the authority record for strap-on sex contains Wikipedia, Google and “LC database” as notes in the 670 field. update: Tim at LibraryThing has a post showing the record.
David Weinberger has a concise summary of Thomas Mann’s long article about the concept of reference and scholarship and how it fits into modern day librarianship, especially research libraries. This is the sort of thing Michael Gorman talks about in grouchy pundit ways, but Mann really digs deeper and seems to understand both sides of the equation. Weinberger’s posts sums up some of the high points with some strong pullquotes, but I’d really also suggest reading Mann’s entire essay. Here are some quotes that I liked, but don’t think that gets you off the hook from reading it. You hve to get to about page 35 before you hit the “what sholdl we do about this?” part.
I cannot claim to have a system that flattens all the lumps, but I am concerned that many of the more important problems facing scholars are being ignored because a “digital library” paradigm puts blinders on our very ability to notice the problems in the first place.
On different types of searching:
Note that as a reference librarian I could bring to bear on this question a whole variety of different search techniques, of which most researchers are only dimly aware of (or not aware at all): I used not just keyword searching, but subject category searching (via LC=s subject headings), shelf-browsing (via LC’s classification system), related record searching, and citation searching. (I also did some rather sophisticated Boolean combination searching, with truncation symbols and parentheses, discussed below.) Further, as a librarian I thought in terms of types of literature–specialized encyclopedia articles, literature review articles, subject bibliographies–whose existence never even occurs to most non-librarians, who routinely think only in terms of subject searches rather than format searches. And, further, one of the reasons I sought out the Web database to begin with was that I knew it would also provide people contact information–i.e., the mail and e-mail addresses of scholars who have worked on the same topic. The point here needs emphasis: a research library can provide not only a vast amount of content that is not on the open Internet; it can also provide multiple different search techniques that are usually much more efficient than “relevance ranked” and “more like this” Web searching. And most of these search techniques themselves are not available to offsite users who confine their searches to the open Internet.
On folksonomies:
While folksonomies have severe limitations and cannot replace conventional cataloging, they also offer real advantages that can supplement cataloging. Perhaps financial arrangements with LibraryThing (or other such operations) might be worked out in such a way that LC/OCLC catalog records for books would provide clickable links to LibraryThing records for the same works. In this way researchers could take advantage of that supplemental network of connections without losing the primary network created by professional librarians.
davindweinberger,
folksonomy,
lcsh,
loc,
scholarship,
thomasmann
Finally, a subject heading for the rest of us.
http://www.librarything.com/thingology/2007/10/lcsh-adds-strap-on-sex.php
My favorite is that “Dildos” can be subdivided geographically.
[…] 28th, 2007 · No Comments Jessamyn from librarian.net posted today that “dildos” is now a new Library of Congress subject heading (LCSH)! […]
>>My favorite is that “Dildos” can be subdivided geographically.
How does one get that from the record? Can strap-on sex?
@tim: If you go to the record for dildoes — which, if I’m reading things correctly was added at the same time — you can see it in there, pretty sure.
This reminds me of my all-time favorite LCSH, “Self-induced vibration.” Sadly it’s about some scientific/mathematical concept and isn’t nearly as entertaining as it sounds.
[…] additions, such as Dildos and Strap-on sex (both of which may be subdivided Geographically) [see Jessamyn and Thingology], and now stumbling across Spies–Professional ethics, LC is certainly making […]
a.
What search engines have a thesaurus as part of the features so that alternative search terms are suggested when you have difficulties figuring out the best search terms?…
b.
How would you use the library of congress subject headings as one might use a thesaurus in conjunction with google or with ask.com to figure out alternative search terms?…
[…] Jessamyn has a funny post on the addition of “Strap-on Sex” to the official Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) authorities file.* Apparently she has Sandy Berman’s “Dildoes” LCSH application on her refrigerator.The record itself is at right. I particularly like the third citation, “Google search, August 30.” Apparently the cataloger searched for and then found the term “strap-on dildo sex” in Google. Who would have thunk it? […]
[…] However, even in this moment of victory, we must pause and acknowledge that while this battle may be won, the war continues; as Jessamyn points out, there is still no LOC subject heading for “dildoes.” […]