Literary and Linguistic Inquiry Through the Lens of Indexing Languages
"Indexing language" is a hypernym for the classification schemes, thesauri, and subject heading lists that catalogers and indexers use to organize information in libraries and other collections. Popular indexing languages include the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), the Library of Congress Classification (LCC), the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), and the Sears List of Subject Headings, all of which aim for universal coverage of topics. Other indexing languages, such as the Homosaurus, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and various classification schemes for music genres aim to classify and organize within specific domains.
All these indexing languages consist of lists of authorized indexing terms (such as "Mammals" or "Obsessive-compulsive disorder"); definitions of relationships between these terms (such as broader and narrower terms); and rules, instructions, and notation systems for assigning indexing terms to works (such as books, movies, and poems) or other artifacts or people. These are the tools that indexers and catalogers use to collocate books about similar topics on library shelves and to assign metadata in MARC records and other places to support searching a collection by subject.
While indexing languages are created and maintained primarily as tools for classifying and organizing information, they can also be studied as rich and complex texts in their own right, as living documents and cultural artifacts, and as examples of genre with specific rhetorical goals and detailed grammars. For example, the authorized terms in an indexing language's controlled vocabulary represent value judgments and rhetorical choices made by its editors and authors. The relationships between indexing terms reinforce or call into question hierarchical structures. The grammar of the indexing languages informs how intersectionality and other relationships are represented or not. The way that indexers and catalogers represent works while using an indexing language determines which works we find and how we view and interact with them. Updates, additions, and subtractions to indexing languages based on "warrant" both reflect and effect changes in language use and standardization. These observations about the rich relationship between indexing languages and meaning suggest that indexing languages can be studied much as we study literary, rhetorical, poetical, and other texts—and that the methods that we use to study these texts can be applied to the study of indexing languages and to study their relationships with these other texts.
To situate itself within a graduate programs in English and Textual Studies, this seminar considers indexing languages as texts, cultural artifacts, and examples of genre, and then treats indexing languages as an entry point for practicing textual analysis and close reading, for identifying connections and differences between schools of literary criticism and critical cataloging, for historically and culturally contextualizing indexing languages and works, and for examining different rhetorical approaches and grammars for organizing information.
This close examination of primary texts like the DDC and the LCSH (and secondary texts like critical analyses of indexing languages and proposals for changes to indexing languages) which are not traditionally studied in literature or language programs aims to give students a different perspective on their primary methods of inquiry, and to reinforce the broad and adaptive value of critical approaches to studying literature, culture, language, and rhetoric. It also gives students an opportunity to examine texts from their primary area of study (such as Victorian literature or feminist rhetoric) through the lens of how these topics and domains are represented, misrepresented, or underrepresented in different indexing languages.
As part of the seminar, students will produce original research that puts their area of inquiry in conversation with one or more indexing language and with conversations in critical cataloging. For example, a student focused on Native American Studies might critique subject headings such as "Indians of North America" in the LCSH, discuss the effect of such headings on how Indigenous literature and found and understood, and use their knowledge of the literature in their field to establish warrant for updated subject headings. A student focused on Feminist Theory and texts might study Hope Olson's analysis of power, hierarchy, and gender in indexing languages and relate Olson's findings to approaches to gender and feminism in other literatures. Another student focused on religious texts as literature might examine how religion—particularly Christian and non-Christian religions—are represented in the DDC and analyze how American attitudes toward religion and religious scholarship have changed in the century-plus since the DDC established its notation scheme for religion. Whatever their area of inquiry, students should find that indexing languages provide a flexible and open-ended entry point that guides them to pursue their research agendas from different angles.
Tentative Reading List
This class will consider primary texts (including popular indexing languages), secondary texts that directly discuss and critique the primary texts, texts that discuss classification and knowledge organization broadly, and texts that introduce or apply
Primary Texts
- The Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)
- The Sears List of Subject Headings
- The Library of Congress Classification (LCC)
- The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC)
- The Universal Decimal Classification (UDC)
- The X̱wi7x̱wa Library's British Columbia variant of the Brian Deer Classification
- The Homosaurus
- Mashantucket Pequot Thesaurus
- The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
- Principles of the Sears List (Both as an example of instructions as genre and as an accessible and concise introduction to cataloging)
Secondary Texts and Critiques
- Prejudices and Antipathies - Sanford Berman
- Reports from SACO meetings on proposed changes to the LCSH
- The Power to Name - Hope Olson
- Deracializing Dewey - Furner
- Transcending the Catalog - Adler
- Queering the Catalog - Drabinski
- Browsing Through Bias: Howard and Knowlton
- Chapters from Inclusive Cataloging - Biley et al.
- The Sears List of Subject Headings: Social and cultural dinnsesions in historical, theoretical, and design contexts - Holstrom
Knowledge Organization Texts
- How information systems communicate as documents: the concept of authorial voice - Feinberg
- Sorting Things Out - Bowker and Star
- The Platypus and the Mermaid - Ritvo (first two chapters: The Point of Order and Flesh Made Word)
- Two kinds of evidence: How information systems form rhetorical arguments - Feinberg
- Probably some Hjorland and domain analysis