1As the only attendee of all four ethics in information organization conferences, I have become a de facto historian. Thus, in this keynote I will provide an informal summary of the first three conferences, identifying themes we addressed that have had momentum, continue with ethical challenges we still face, and end with some new challenges that have emerged.
2The term “uncanny valley” (Mori, 1970) refers to the uneasy feelings invoked by objects that replicate a human being, but not quite enough. The object may seem human enough on the surface, but some clue signals its falseness, triggering revulsion in the observer. The notion of the uncanny valley returns me to the first Ethics of Information Organization conference in 2009. Dr. Hope Olson volunteered me to speak on a panel called “Trust, Authority and Power, the Intersection of IO Professionals with Users, Standards, and Institutions.” In my segment, I asked, “Can a catalog care about you?” The question got a laugh, but what I meant was not warm, emotional, romantic love, but rather care relating to the ethic of care, the theory promoted by Gilligan (1982), Tronto, (1994) and others who defined care as valuing context, positionality, and flexibility in ethical decision-making. I believed “caring” in this sense should apply to ethical dilemmas related to the usability and effectiveness of the library catalog. Most obviously, the system should allow a user to find resources with relevance and precision. This relates to accuracy, usability, and an easily navigable interface.
3In another sense, a catalog “caring” means the standards are inclusive of your terminology and reality. It might mean bending standards so a local catalog can accommodate local needs, so that working in the catalog seems natural and “real.” However, an uncaring catalog can jar us out of that feeling of naturalness, realness. At that conference, Tennis described how the catalog can commit “objective violence” (“Abstracts” 2009), something I later called conceptual violence (Fox & Reece 2012), in other words, the harms inflicted not through bodily harm but through words or concepts. In objective or conceptual violence, we see the falsity. Thus, the uncanny catalog might seem like it “cares,” connecting users with knowledge or information, but that “naturalness” is disrupted. It feels “natural” to see titles classed under what seems to be the “correct” heading or classificatory placement, but then a user can be jolted by a heading that seems uncaring or reminds us that there is a structure of standards in place, a structure created out of convenience, ignorance, or indifference.
4Examples of this, as we know, most often relate to human groups. It could be personally disturbing, like seeing the “Illegal Alien” Library of Congress Subject Heading. It might mean seeing the deadname or incorrect gender of a trans author in the record or authority file, a subject heading that does not derive from the human population that it names, a classification structure that does not favor its community’s organization principles, or a subject inaccurately shelved adjacent to something distasteful. One of my favorite quotations from Smiraglia (2006) illustrates this: “when a gay adolescent searches for literature to help understand and finds that it all falls under ‘perversion’ then we have oppressed yet another youth” (p. 186). This is conceptual violence resulting from an uncaring catalog.
5Other types of ethical dilemmas can betray “uncaringness.” Mistakes, errors, or inaccuracy can result from carelessness, the inability to work quality checks into workflow because of budget constraints, overreliance on copy catalogers or untrained student workers, standards that are too complex or inaccessible, or the inability to learn these standards because of understaffing or underfunding. It also means accepting errors in the catalog, stolen authorship, corporate interference in the service of labor or cost- savings. It might also mean deciding whether to call out deceit, such as misrepresented authorship, intellectual property theft, or fiction masquerading as truth. These types of ethical dilemmas are less obvious, but also signify a lack of care.
6Prior to the panel at the first conference, Dr. Hannes Britz slipped me a note that read, “The ‘equal principle (meaning equal access to information) cannot override the ‘difference principle,’” which means accessibility of information to different types of people. What he meant was that equal access to information supports cataloger convenience, which is undergirded by a theory of justice—everyone has an equal chance. This is Rawlsian ethics, which I discussed in the second conference (Fox & Reece, 2012). In other words, universal standards do not consider user differences. This makes it easier on the cataloger and institutions— no need for accommodations, no need for “care.” Standards are standardized for a reason, for consistency and predictability, so systems can function.
7On the other hand, the difference principle is user focused, considering the many and what we now call “equity.” It means accommodating users rather than forcing them to use a system that does not fit them, caring about them by making information or knowledge accessible to them on their own terms, and making up for past injustices. At the conference, Clare Beghtol approached it from another angle: the profound epistemic shift from anonymous “users” to one singular user and the heterogeneity of those users as a group, who all need to be cared about in the online catalog (“Abstracts” 2009). Her thesis was that “we need to create information organization systems that are hospitable to each complex user and to each complex of cultures.” Have we done this? Each passing conference has revealed more complications.
8Three years later, the second conference included high-level presentations on ethical systems and the ethics behind our systems, along with revisiting the inadequacy of existing codes of ethics. The focus tightened to be more specific and practice oriented. Several presentations discussed marginalized groups, mostly relating to sexual orientation. We expanded to talks on authorship, archives, and digital libraries. A few presentations addressed the business and labor aspects of librarianship. Both conferences were well represented by both researchers and practitioners. Smiraglia (2015) analyzed the content of these two first conferences scientifically, showing that “work on ethics in KO is based on the core principles of KO, but relies also on evidence from librarianship and philosophical guidance” (p. 2). This statement was prescient, as the rest of the conferences continued in this vein.
9The title of the third conference in 2015 shifted from “information organization” to “knowledge organization,” which also reflected the change from Olson organizing to Smiraglia. While we continued with our complaints about codes of ethics and philosophical topics, we added research and publishing ethics and more cultural heritage, with a surprising number relating to music.
10The evolving title for the fourth conference mirrors the evolution of the conference themes and the ethical issues we face. We are more international, mature, and technologically advanced, and have brought together information and knowledge organization. Topics from previous conferences re-emerged, such as the usual theoretical topics and marginalized groups, but we have added more depth on museums and cultural heritage and of course, we cannot avoid our recent advances in technology, no longer social tagging, but artificial intelligence. As we launch into our fourth conference, I will show several key areas identified in our first three conferences where attempts are made to provide a caring catalog. I focus on how research or parallel work in the field has resulted in progress. I am not arguing for causation; that is, that our conferences are responsible for progress in the field. If we accept that knowledge is created socially, our conference is one ingredient.
11My methodology is not scientific nor exhaustive, but observational. I do not mean to ignore work prior to our first conference. Rather than analyzing the research, I have reviewed what is happening for practitioners in some of the areas addressed in our conferences. As researchers, it is easy to live in a theory bubble, but at some point, our work should inform and receive feedback from practice. I will be focusing mostly on the Anglo-North American realm with which I am most familiar and ingrained; however, some international overlap exists.
12I observed communications in several online cataloging groups and resources where ethical topics are discussed. These are informal, but I wanted to see what was bothering catalogers on a day-to-day basis, in their habitats. Additionally, these groups allow more access, and epistemology researchers see the knowledge creation here is outside of Foucault’s (1972) “enunciative modalities,” in other words, more than just those who “allowed’ to speak. One source was the traditional listserv, AUTOCAT, which is “devoted to issues relating to cataloging and classification.” This list tends more toward “what number should I use” questions, a little about theoretical aspects and much less toward the technical aspects, such as dealing with cataloging software. Another source was the highly active Facebook group Troublesome Catalogers and Magical Metadata Fairies (TCMMF), where conversations range from the mundane to the esoteric. It has 9,930 members from across the globe and across many cataloging contexts. Library Twitter (now known as X) also was consulted because it provides news, announces talks, and generally shows what librarians and catalogers are outraged about, an ideal forum for identifying ethical dilemmas. Several hashtags can be searched on Library Twitter, such as #critlib, #critcat, #critcatinate #droptheiword. While many more resources exist, many are compiled on the website The Cataloging Lab, which is a clearinghouse for critical cataloging information and activism and will be discussed.
13In all three conferences, repeated cries bemoaned the lack of a formal code of ethics for catalogers. Sheila Bair’s (2006) code of cataloging ethics was regularly mentioned but considered inadequate. The 2008 ALA Code of Ethics was recurrently accused of being too broad to be useful to cataloging and of not acknowledging the complexity of what it means to be biased. At the second conference, Austin Reese and I provided high-level recommendations for a code of ethics but admittedly not one that would be meaningful for day-to-day work (Fox & Reece, 2012). There is a hero to this story, however, and she is Beth Shoemaker, who presented at the third conference. She described the inadequacies of the 2008 ALA Code of Ethics as well as the Association for Library Catalogs and Technical Services (ALCTS) supplement, and her talk provided recommendations for creating a new one (Shoemaker, 2015), and five years later, she did just that.
14Along with Karen Snow, who also attended the third conference, Beth Shoemaker helped form the Cataloging Ethics Steering Committee (CESC) in 2019 who then in 2020 released a Code of Ethics for Catalogers, with a final draft in January of 2021. It was created by an Anglo-American group, but has since been translated into Greek, Arabic, Welsh, and French, which are all freely available online. The new code of ethics has ten statements of ethical principles, many of which are familiar because they address the issues that have arisen at these conferences. It is privacy and bias conscious, calls for transparency and workplace support, advocates for diversity and community voice, and asks that we recognize our personal and institutional biases and work to overcome them. The principles are action-oriented and focus on users and communities, changing problems with us and our standards, and cooperating and supporting catalogers and their communities.
15Not to be outdone, in 2021 the ALA added a principle to their code of ethics that states:
16We affirm the inherent dignity and rights of every person. We work to recognize and dismantle systemic and individual biases; to confront inequity and oppression; to enhance diversity and inclusion; and to advance racial and social justice in our libraries, communities, profession, and associations through awareness, advocacy, education, collaboration, services, and allocation of resources and spaces.
17“Every person” echoes Clare Beghtol’s “a user” from the first conference and the Code of Ethics for Catalogers. ALA, too, are making efforts to care.
18The next area where progress has occurred in both research and practice is the ethics around naming human groups, using the vocabulary of human groups, and how human groups are represented on the descriptive side of records. This hits several principles: acknowledging bias, being user focused, and working with user communities, and working to change standards. One of the few talks on specific human groups at our first conference was from Julianne Bealle, then the assistant editor of the Dewey Decimal Classification, presenting on racially mixed people categories in DDC. The talk mainly focused on the use of MARC fields and tables, with little on epistemology or knowledge generation. The second conference included a few talks on topics on human groups, particularly on sexual orientation and indigenous groups. The third delved to even deeper marginalized groups, including children, traditional musicians, and archival subjects.
19Out in the world, similar momentum was building toward what we would come to call “critical cataloging.” Critical cataloging was named by Olson in 1997 but picked up steam recently. It is “a movement that focuses on developing critical practices around cataloging which can mitigate harmful ideology present in library catalogs, cataloging standards, and controlled vocabularies” (Pratt Institute, 2023). It “focuses on mitigating the ways in which classification and the organization of knowledge codify systems and hierarchies of oppression” (Bruce, 2022). It is considered a narrower term of “radical cataloging” and critical librarianship and relates to dismantling systems of oppression within the catalog. Some of the related efforts include “decolonizing” the catalog, “queering” the catalog (Drabinski, 2013), “conscientious cataloging” (Ford, 2020) or many instances of “inclusive cataloging.”
20At the second conference, my co-author Austin Reece and I (2012) described the pragmatic ethics of John Dewey, how they resembled the pragmatic epistemology related to domain analysis and how that seemed like an ideal ethical take for knowledge organization. Pragmatism requires that concepts are “developed in relation to a particular need or task,” “revising current practices in light of new experiential evidence,” and “testing done with the help of the ‘community,’ however defined” (p. 381). The Cataloging Lab, introduced in 2018, is a mechanism that fulfils the promise of pragmatism. The Cataloging Lab was created and is overseen by Violet Fox (no relation), who attended our third conference, and who has had a sizeable impact on the ethical aspects of information and knowledge organization in North America.
21The Cataloging Lab is a cheat sheet for critical cataloging and activism. It not only allows catalogers to keep up with current events, but also provides a voice for people to get involved. For those who study epistemology, it offers a chance for the knowing subject to be heard. It also meets several principles of the new code of ethics. The site compiles :
-
problematic subject headings and classification and hosts SACO funnels
-
catalog statements about problematic language and materials in catalogs, and cataloging mission statements
-
activities around critical cataloging, including events/committees, webinars, talks, documentaries, and blog posts
-
resources for best practices, such as indigenous authority work best practices and instructions on how to propose a change to an LCHS subject heading
22The Cataloging Lab has a specific point of view, but it firmly aligns with the Code of Ethics for Catalogers.
23Along with the Code of Ethics for Catalogers and the ALA Code of Ethics revision, both in 2021 and The Cataloging Lab launching in 2018, between 2013 and 2023, many events promoting critical cataloging occurred. The Homosaurus, a vocabulary for LGBT+ topics that was devised in 1997, underwent significant changes in 2015 to make it more usable by mainstream audiences and specifically as a supplement to LCSH. Other events include the founding of CESC, National Indigenous Knowledge and Language Alliance (NIKLA), the Queer Metadata Collective, the Trans Metadata Collective, and the Gender & Sexuality SACO funnel.
24A few other catalyzing events occurred in that timeframe. First, the “Illegal Aliens” subject heading controversy began in the US. In 2016, students from Dartmouth University created a documentary called “Change the Subject” on their efforts to change the LCSH from “Illegal Aliens” to something less offensive, something more caring. Politicians from both sides got involved and the Library of Congress struggled to manage the situation. Library school students followed in real time as it unfolded, which brought a human face to the consequences of uncritical cataloging. In 2021 LC changed the heading to “Noncitizens” and “Illegal Immigration.” However, many were unsatisfied with the change, which then led to further activism to “drop the I word,” an example of objective or conceptual violence. The murder of George Floyd by the police in Minneapolis, MN in 2020, along with seemingly endless real violence and political turmoil in the US combined with the trauma of the pandemic mobilized many against systemic injustice.
25While socio-cultural issues in subject cataloging often took the spotlight, other issues with description arose. At the first conference, Smiraglia (2009) discussed how resource description can “present threats to information ethics” by being bibliocentric (p. 676). In other words, by focusing on books and not other types of resources, discovery can be compromised. RDA was implemented in 2013 between those two conferences, and at the second conference, McCourry (2015) described how RDA does not address user needs, and that a standard that “meets the needs of the average user will serve no user fully” (p. 344). In other words, it meets the equal principle rather than the difference principle and thus does not meet the principles of our future code of ethics.
26RDA is a perennial topic on the TCMMF Facebook group, but only minimally about discovery. Instead, there are diatribes about the increasing complexity of the rules and the usability of the RDA Toolkit. The Toolkit has been a constant theme, especially since the new toolkit interface was launched and the old was scheduled to be sunsetted but was delayed to 2026 because the new version is almost unintelligible for new users and experienced users alike. Similarly, posters on AUTOCAT felt that the complexity of RDA and the FRBR model was pointless. Julie Moore, cataloging librarian, 2020 Margaret Mann Citation award winner, and one who understands RDA, lambasted the complexity, abstractness, and cost associated with RDA on TCMMF:
With each iteration, RDA seems to be straying further and further away from their initial focus to try to create a set of rules that will be simpler for more catalogers to be able to understand...How ethical is it really when we have a set of rules at our core that are so difficult to understand and use that they require extensive interpretation? … Even when [libraries] buy it for a princely sum, they tend to be put off by how difficult it is to understand.
27Moore’s critique points directly to this principle in the code of ethics for catalogers: “We support efforts to make standards and tools financially, intellectually, and technologically accessible to all cataloguers, and developed with evidence-based research and stakeholder input.”
28The ALA Code of Ethics states, “We insist on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace. We promote education, training, equitable pay, and a fair work environment for everyone who catalogues so that they can continue to support search and discovery.” The business of librarianship has profound impacts on practice and tends to be front of mind with the cataloging groups, enough that it made the new Code of Ethics for Catalogers. In our first two conferences, Gross (2012) discussed why we should elimiate library consultant reports and she also categorized the various ways that catalogers are attacked and devalued by management. Keeping the principle of the code of ethics in mind, some of the labor aspects in the US and Canada noted on library social media include exploitation of professionals and paraprofessionals, reliance on copy catalogers/students, and low pay while requiring an advanced degree. Thus, a push to unionize, has been urged forward by Emily Drabinski, 23-24 president of the American Library Association and critical cataloger.
29This leads to another current and future threat: artificial intelligence. Here, the uncanny catalog becomes the uncanny cataloger: artificial intelligence completing metadata and taking our jobs. While large language models such as ChatGPT do not have bodies, they replicate human activity, and do so in a way that seems human, down to the blinking cursor, as if the machine was thinking or typing. Like many fields, much chatter has emerged, both dismissive and fearful. In nearly all cases, the enthusiasm for using AI as another productivity tool is met with admission that it does a bad job except on simple tasks. It potentially could be trained to do a better job, but even then, it would likely would only replace data entry jobs. For example, because of the biobliocentrism in our standards, AI probably could adequately assign metadata to a very standard and popular book, but any deviations from a very standard resource would likely be not only wrong, but more dangerously, look correct to the uninitiated. Also present in cataloger social media reactions to AI was fierce resistance to any cataloging without human intervention, and of course, predictions that catalogers will be replaced by chatbots in the service of budgets. However, one cataloger noted that ChatGPT is just the latest of many automation tools introduced throughout the years that have caused similar fears.
30We are back to several age-old questions in our field. Will computers replace us? How can we make administration understand the value of human expertise? The threat of artificial intelligence hearkens to the classic question asked by Santamauro and Adams (2006), “Are we trained monkeys or Philosopher Kings?” In short, what is the meaning of cataloger’s judgment? Are we just autofilling forms according to the standards, or is there a requisite knowledge and skills set for deciding what goes in each field? For what it’s worth, Chat GPT violates nearly every principle of the new code of ethics in some way. Perhaps its poor quality of work can be used to demonstrate the value of a real, caring cataloger who creates a caring catalog. We will find out what the next chapter holds, perhaps at the next Ethics of Knowledge Organization conference.