LAPL reclassifies its LGBT materials... several decades after the fact.

[owlectomy]

The Los Angeles Public Library, which previously had its LGBT nonfiction shelved under a 1940s-era call number under "sexual deviancy," has gotten with the program and is putting them under the a more modern call number under sexual orientation (with the gender studies books and the theory-about-family-relationships books, under the general heading of "culture and institutions.")

You know how you have that one relative whose software is about ten years out of date, and you don't find out until they upgrade, and then you're like "But how were you managing for that long??? Do you have any idea how many viruses you probably got??? Did nobody think this was a bad idea???" --That's a little how I feel right now.

Library cataloging and classification necessarily reifies the current social order in a certain way. (Look at how Dewey Decimal still classifies religion into a big chunk of "Christianity" and a little chunk of "Everything that isn't Christianity.") That means that it's always in flux, and is always going to go on changing, as people look at the current classification and say "Hey, that's hella biased." And libraries can't necessarily afford to recatalog all their materials when a new edition of the Dewey Decimal System comes out -- especially a system as big as LAPL. But still, it seems weird to me that this decision was made in the 1970s and it's just now being reflected in the LAPL collections.

Comments

[grrlpup]

That does seem overdue (heh). I was happy when my local library reclassified the Dykes to Watch Out For books so they could live with the rest of the comics instead of in the 306s.

[writerjenn.livejournal.com]

O-O