| The biases of classification and subject headings used by libraries to represent information have long been recognized in the field of library and information studies. Efforts to correct these biases have had some success, but systemic problems continue. The biases, not suprisingly, have a disproportionate effect on groups marginalized within mainstream society. Because they are the means of retrieving information and set the context within which people find that information, classification and subject headings have a major impact on access to and use of library materials. Persistent problems of subject representation for marginalized groups and topics may be attributable to fundamental presumptions. This dissertation questions one such presumption through a feminist deconstruction of foundational literature, of standards governing practice, and of a specific topical application of these standards. Following Patti Lather's description (from education, it is a useful model for other professional fields), deconstruction's three steps are: (1) identify the binary opposition: a pair of apparently opposite concepts one dominant and the other subordinate; (2) reverse its hierarchical relationship; and (3) reveal the binary to be constructed, not innate. The binary opposition I address is universality/diversity. For subject representation in library catalogues, universality takes the form of a mistrust of diversity in language and the resultant imposition of a universal language or "controlled vocabulary." In the first two steps of this deconstruction I reveal and decentre this presumption in foundations, standards and practice using relevant texts of verbal and notational subject representation: Charles Cutter's Rules for a Dictionary Catalog (1876/1904) and Melvil Dewey's introductions to his classification (1876/1926); Library of Congress Subject Headings and the Dewey Decimal Classification; and catalogue records for specific books about women and sexuality and/or race and/or class. To decentre these texts I use reading techniques borrowed from management scholars, Marta Calas and Linda Smircich. In the third step, I invoke legal scholar Drucilla Cornell's call for change through an ethical relationship with marginalized and excluded groups not for a different imposed universal solution, but for dynamic, partial, local ameliorations. |
