Our activities

Adding Anti-caste movements - We consulted with Columbia University Rare Books Librarian Matthew Haugen in researching and submitting the proposal. Approved by LC Policy.

Changing Mogul Empire to Mughal Empire was approved in April 2024 with LCSHs updated in June 2024 revising twenty-nine related subject headings and subject strings (such as Portraits, Mughal Empire or Mughal Empire ǂx Kings and rulers ǂv Biography).

The LCSH East Indians. See here for a more detailed description.  

We are reviewing the LCSHs under Ethnography for South Asian countries (Call numbers ranges DS432 [India], DS380 [Pakistan] Individual elements in the population, A-Z), a large and time-intensive project. We are building a strategy for reviewing headings that are neither self-referential nor any longer in common usage.  There are inconsistencies in spelling, community definition, use of diacritics, or use of qualifiers (Indic people, Pakistani people, South Asian people).  We have submitted a proposal to update references to Bengali (South Asian people) [DS432.B4] and future projects include revising Kanarese (Indic people) [DS432.K1907] and adding Yadavs (Indic people).

We are working in cooperation with the CJK (China-Japan-Korea) SACO Funnel and the Middle East and Islamic Studies SACO Funnel on the Oriental Project.  This project will replace the term “Oriental” in LC subject headings and LCC captions that are considered harmful and change relevant classification numbers accordingly.  LC Policy has given us approval to begin Phase One in our Project Plan Roadmap.

We have been reviewing problematic terms used for LGBT-related LCSH.  We have reached out to the Gender and Sexuality Funnel and done preliminary research on the use of the LCSH Eunuchs and are also currently looking into adding specific communities such as Hijra and Khwaja Sira as groups under Ethnology—India and Ethnology—Pakistan.