by Kate Stewart
Chapter 33
When she started her position as a cataloger in 1971, Ruth was probably aware of Barbara Ringer’s lawsuit, and she had observed that her women colleagues were not being promoted, despite their organizational skills and deep knowledge of library science. After Nick Hedlesky’s retirement, Myrl Powell took over as section head of Social Sciences II for a few years until he was promoted to Assistant Chief of Subject Cataloging.1 In the spring of 1983, Ruth temporarily replaced him. She returned to her old rank for one month and then was permanently promoted at the end of June, to the rank of GS-13 as head of the section. Ruth was probably the most qualified person for the job and may have had the most seniority in her department by this time. She had worked at LC for twelve years as a subject cataloger, had past supervisory experience, and was fluent in German. Her knowledge of cataloging rules and practices was also impressive.2
Ruth was now a supervisor again, but her new role may have made her coworkers uneasy. She might have started out optimistically in this position, convinced that she could reform the section (or possibly the wider Subject Cataloging Division) with her organizational methods and her ideas for greater efficiency. But Ruth ran into the same problems that she had faced as a supervisor in Vietnam: the same old bureaucracy and the same old issues with her subordinates. She would also be caught in the middle of one of the most controversial aspects of librarianship in the 1980s.
A vital task of every subject cataloger at LC is to submit proposed subject heading changes to LC’s system of subject heading authorities, which are used in libraries throughout the world. Known as Library of Congress subject headings (LCSH), the system uses a controlled vocabulary, meaning that every word or phrase (there are now about 420,000 subject terms in the system3) must be approved as an “official” term. For instance, when searching for the word “cars” in LCSH, you will be redirected to the term “automobiles,” which is an approved heading. Theoretically, every book on cars in a library will be listed under the subject heading “Automobiles.” These headings can be strung together to be more specific. For example, a book on the history of Ford Motor Company could be given a heading “Automobiles—History—United States.” Each subject heading has its own catalog record called an authority record, which lists when it was created, other terms that are similar but are not the authorized heading, and the rules that govern its use as a subject heading. When a subject cataloger comes across a book that contributes new knowledge, he or she must consider whether a new term should be authorized or if a rule change to an older heading is necessary. Until 1992, when the Subject Authority Cooperative Program (SACO) was founded as part of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC), only LC catalogers could propose changes to this system. Afterward any librarian who worked at a library that was an institutional member of PCC and who was trained in LCSH could nominate changes to the committee at LC.4
Ruth and the other subject catalogers in the Social Sciences II Section proposed many subject heading changes over the years. Until 1980 very few headings changed in LCSH, due to the manpower necessary to update thousands of catalog cards and to refile them.5 The records of who submitted which proposed changes were not retained by LC. But the staff of the Policy and Standards Division (which is responsible for maintaining the LCSH system) found a memo that Ruth wrote in 1985 about the possibility of changing the heading “Crime and criminals” to “Criminology.” She wrote about the complex problems that were endemic to all major changes:
We have been holding off establishing the Subject Heading “Criminology” because the changes would be too voluminous, i.e. 750 corrections out of a 2,800 file under Crime and Criminals. The longer we wait to establish Criminology the larger and more unwieldy the file under “Crime and Criminals” becomes….. therefore, [supposing] we establish “Criminology” with a note, saying prior to 1985 books on this subject were entered under “Crime and criminals.” This would still leave room, if and when the time comes that corrections could be done by computer programs, or if there were a period of fewer books coming in and personnel available to make changes they could always be done and the split file notation taken out of the database.
At the same time, if a database user finds “criminology” turning up only books published during or after 1985[,] there would be enough of a question mark to check what went on, i.e. consult the [subject heading] authority file and learn that this is a new heading, etc. etc. Seems to me that’s one of the major benefits of Subj. Hdgs. online will give users.6
This memo reveals not only the conundrum of making widespread changes to headings but also how new computer technology would change both the workload for catalogers and the ease of making changes. Starting in 1980, LC began a massive project to convert the main card catalog to an electronic system. This project is still not complete, and staff had to undergo extensive training sessions in the basics of personal computers and how to use them for cataloging and other library applications. Many staff members were resistant to adopting technology too quickly and understood the fallacy of spending an enormous amount of manpower creating an entirely new system that might become obsolete before it was completed. Today LC still has catalog cards backlogged to 1898 that have not been fully integrated into the online catalog.7 But one advantage of converting the catalog was that, finally, batch corrections to vast amounts of records were possible.
By the 1980s LC was under a huge amount of pressure from outside librarians to reform LCSH. Catalogers who worked at other libraries had no say in the terms they were forced to use to describe books. They no doubt fielded questions from their users about why, for example, a term such as “Cookery” was used for cookbooks. They saw daily the difficulties their users faced in finding books and were probably at a loss to explain the complexities and minutiae of LCSH to people who simply wanted to find books quickly. One of these fed-up librarians was Sanford “Sandy” Berman, a cataloger at the Hennepin County Library in Minneapolis. In 1971 he published his first book, Prejudices and Antipathies: A Tract on the LC Subject Headings Concerning People. His book’s chapter titles seemingly covered most of the topics that the Social Sciences II Subject Cataloging Section was responsible for:
I. Races, nationalities, faiths, and ethnic groups
II. Chauvinism, the “Bwana Syndrome,” and the Third World
III. Politics, peace, labor, law enforcement, etc.
IV. Man/Woman/Sex
V. Children, youth, “idiots,” and the “underground”
In his introduction he began by admitting the usefulness and irreplaceability of LCSH but then launched into the heart of the crusade he would take on for the next forty years:
In the realm of headings that deal with people and cultures—in short, with humanity—the LC list can only “satisfy” parochial, jingoistic Europeans and North Americans, white-hued, at least nominally Christian (and preferably Protestant) in faith, comfortably situated in the middle- and higher-income brackets, largely domiciled in suburbia, fundamentally loyal to the Established Order, and heavily imbued with the transcendent, incomparable glory of Western civilization. Further, it reflects a host of untenable—indeed, obsolete and arrogant—assumptions with respect to young people and women. And exudes something less than sympathy or even fairness toward organized labor and the sexually unorthodox or “avant-garde.” . . . Just because, in short, we were “brought up that way” is no valid reason for perpetuating, either in our crania or our catalogues, the humanity-degrading, intellect-constricting rubbish that litters the LC list.8
Berman alluded to the fact that, despite LC’s insistence that they were just following “common practice” of how terms were used in books and other scholarly works, this controlled vocabulary was not created in a vacuum. The librarians who approved LCSH terms had their own biases and prejudices, whether or not they realized it. Berman was careful to note that the point of his book was “not to riot, if you please—only to remedy long-standing mistakes and to gain for the profession
a genuine, earned respect among people who read and think.”9
When Berman’s book came out, it received mixed reviews in library-related publications. But there is no doubt that it got librarians, and especially catalogers, talking about their work and questioning it in a new way.10 When Ruth started her job as a subject cataloger in 1971, the same year Prejudices and Antipathies was published, she and her coworkers read and discussed the book. Some probably didn’t think that LCSH needed any major changes as it was, and at least some others might have felt powerless to change a system in which they were firmly embedded. But those with a more radical bent, such as Ruth, might have seen her position as a way of fighting the system from within. There is no existing correspondence between Ruth and Sandy Berman in her collections of papers or his at the American Library Association Archives. Perhaps the two never even spoke to each other at conferences. But Ruth’s coworkers agreed that she was firmly on Berman’s side. She submitted many heading changes, including some that seemed irrational to other people at LC. Thompson Yee remembered an incident in which Ruth passionately advocated for a new subject heading, “State-sponsored terrorism.” She fought tooth and nail for it, but the committee decided it wasn’t needed.11
Berman’s main target at LC was Mary K. D. Pietris, who was the head of the Subject Cataloging Division from 1978 until 1992 and one of Ruth’s supervisors. Berman, armed with citations from books for evidence, regularly wrote letters to the library—addressing them to Pietris and the Subject Cataloging Division—to request changes to subject headings. Pietris diligently wrote back to Berman about why a term could or could not be changed.12 In 1977, with support from the Library of Congress, the ALA Subject Analysis Committee established the Racism and Sexism in Subject Analysis Subcommittee, which was charged with writing a report with recommendations.13 The subcommittee reported that an “important and guiding document” was Joan K. Marshall’s On Equal Terms: A Thesaurus for Nonsexist Indexing and Cataloging—a book similar to Berman’s—which had been published in 1977. The subcommittee first met in 1978 at the ALA conference, and Ruth wrote a summary of it in the Library of Congress Information Bulletin’s lengthy appendix of reports from the conference. She described its four current projects: an evaluation of subject heading terms applied to groups of concern to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a revision of subject headings related to Native Americans, the compilation of research on African American–related headings, and a bibliography of research on terminology related to women.14
Berman and Pietris published an exchange of their letters in the March 1981 issue of the cataloging publication Technicalities. Pietris was no doubt exasperated with Berman’s obsessive campaign, but she was able to keep a sense of humor about the situation and always tried to adhere to the policies and procedures in place at LC.
In 1987 Daniel Boorstin retired as librarian of Congress and President Reagan nominated Princeton University’s celebrated Russian and Cold War historian, Dr. James Billington. Once again librarians were agitated that another academic was being nominated to lead the nation’s largest library and library policy nationwide. Just a year and a half after Billington was confirmed as librarian of Congress, Sandy Berman wrote this outraged letter to him:
You must be kidding! (But I’m afraid you’re not.) Anyway, I lately learned that you’ve proposed the elimination of all subject and other tracings (i.e., access points) from LC bibliographic records as a cost-cutting, speed-enhancing measure. Rumor has it that YOU never search catalogs by anything but author or title . . . so why trouble with subject headings and various “added entries.” . . . In short, what WE consumers need out here on the front lines is better, more fulsome and functional cataloging from LC, not less . . . If better, more adequate cataloging will cost more, then please tell us. Tell that to the library community and ask for our help in getting LC the greater resources in money, equipment, and personnel that it needs. I’ve personally been known as a severe LC critic. But I’m at base a friendly critic. And would be among the first to sign a petition for more appropriations for LC. Or write my Congressional representatives to increase your funding. I’m completely willing and ready to do that. All I await is your admission that things need to be improved. And that you want the extra resources to start improving.15
Clearly Billington’s proposed plan to eliminate subject headings never got off the ground (whether Billington seriously considered this or it was all a misunderstanding is unclear). But perhaps something in Berman’s letter or in feedback from other librarians struck a nerve. The next February, Billington submitted to Congress a budget request that was 22 percent higher than the previous year’s, the largest increase since World War II. He noted bluntly:
The Library has been allowed to fall behind. It has simply not been able to keep up with inflation in book prices, with the requirement to absorb sequestrations, and with the need to absorb all or most of recent mandated annual pay raises. An essentially declining annual appropriation has begun to erode the Library’s ability to serve the nation. The Library now employs 475 fewer employees on Federal appropriations than in 1984. This alarming erosion should not be allowed to continue.16
Although the final appropriations bill included less funding than Billington had asked for, an extra $5.2 million was provided for hiring catalogers to tackle the library’s “arrearage,” its backlog of uncataloged books.17
A few years later, in 1992, the Program for Cooperative Cataloging was established.18 This network allowed major research libraries to join in the process of submitting headings for approval to the Policy and Standards Division at LC. Catalogers at member libraries were trained to recognize when a new heading was needed and how to submit a new heading for consideration. Berman spoke at a cataloging forum at the Library of Congress in February 1993, a month after Ruth retired.19 By then his influence was widely felt at the library. Slowly but surely, changes had been made to LCSH in the direction of inclusivity. An article published by University of Memphis librarian Stephen Knowlton in 2005 revealed that out of the 225 headings that Berman listed in Prejudices and Antipathies, 63 percent had been modified to his suggestions or something close to it.20 For instance, “Eskimo” was changed to “Inuit,” and “Group sex,” the heading that Ruth established in 1974 and mentioned in her letter to Gabe Horchler, was slightly modified. Its record now reads:
LC control no.: sh 85057499
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/sh85057499
HEADING: Group sex
000 00475cz a2200205n 450
001 4708870
005 20120326094948.0
008 860211i| anannbabn |b ana
010 __ |a sh 85057499
035 __ |a (DLC)sh 85057499
035 __ |a (DLC)55555
040 __ |a DLC |c DLC |d DLC
150 __ |a Group sex
450 __ |a Orgies
450 __ |a Swinging (Sexual behavior)
450 __ |a Troilism
550 __ |w g |a Sex
550 __ |w g |a Sex customs
906 __ |t 8748 |u fk03 |v 0
953 __ |a xx00 |b fh05
The term “Jewish question” is still an established heading, although now there are no books cataloged with this heading.
Several of the librarians who worked under Ruth remembered that she was not an ideal boss. Even coworkers who considered her a friend found her to be infuriating at times. She could be highly critical, micromanaging her staff and then turning around and blaming them for not being more independent in their work. She had long, drawn-out fights with staff members but then acted like nothing had happened. Like in Vietnam, she had a notoriously messy desk. Kay Elsasser described an incident when Ruth was completely enraged that one of her supervisors wanted her to clean her desk. Ruth’s chain-smoking habit was well known around the library. When she first started in 1971, anyone could smoke anywhere, but over time new rules were instated about smoking only in designated lounges and then, eventually, only outside. Ruth often tried
to convince colleagues to chat with her in the smoking lounges, probably to both gossip and have serious discussions on her own turf. She also wanted to conduct annual reviews with her subordinates there, which made some of them uncomfortable.21
In October 1992 Ruth wrote a long letter to the parents of David Rudman, a former Library of Congress employee who had recently passed away. She had supervised David, and the two had become close. While the purpose of the letter was to provide Rudman’s parents with more insight into his work as a librarian, Ruth went off on several tangents that revealed the office politics of LC and her surreptitious and fairly immature methods of dealing with them. Ruth detailed the early years of her mentorship of David:
Perhaps the first common bond we found was the discovery that neither of us suffered fools gladly and this led to various conversations of how to deal with certain higher up staff members and their “dumb” decisions, instructions, etc. I think our earliest discussions, perhaps more aptly called “chats,” revolved around cataloging issues and different points of analyzing books and how to sway the fools and getting the right thing done without offending the fools.22