Did Libraries 'Change the Subject'? What Happened, What Didn't, and What's Ahead

Abstract

On November 12, 2021, the Library of Congress (LC) announced via a press release issued by the American Library Association that it would update the cataloging subject headings “Aliens” and “Illegal aliens” to “Noncitizens” and “Illegal immigration.” Previously, the Library of Congress had announced plans in March 2016 to remove “Illegal aliens” from its vocabulary, but this met with unprecedented political backlash from members of Congress and the conservative media, causing the Library of Congress not to follow through. During the ensuing five years, library workers advocated for the term’s removal from the subject heading vocabulary. In the face of the LC’s inaction, hundreds of libraries defied the national standard by changing the subject headings locally in order to provide more humane and inclusive description of books related to undocumented immigrants.

Many in the library community received the November 2021 decision with surprise given that LC had been silent on this issue for more than five years. Many were also dissatisfied with the choice of replacement term: “Illegal immigration,” instead of “Unauthorized immigration,” as had been announced in 2016. The word “Illegal” in the heading, while not referring specifically to people, still continued to evoke anti-immigrant sentiment, and was not acceptable to those who had fought to “drop the ‘I’ word” from LC’s vocabulary for years. Three library workers, the authors of this chapter, organized focus groups in November-December 2021 in order to find out how library workers felt about the change. We invited participation through social media channels, and in all, 130 participants signed up for the 12 available focus groups. Most of the participants were library workers, although non-library workers (teaching faculty, individuals interested in the issue) were also in attendance. In this chapter, we share key takeaways from these group sessions, as well as developments over the past years and ongoing efforts to change this heading.

We also discuss how attention to these headings has fueled discussion and action around broader issues of bias and power in the maintenance of library structures and standards.