The role and impact of library of congress classification on the assessment of women's studies collections

Intner, Sheila S.; Futas, Elizabeth

doi:10.1016/0364-6408(96)00067-1

Cited by 12 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…For instance, Heidenwolf (1994) evaluated a large university's public health interdisciplinary research collection in terms of resources not held in the collection and materials cited by experts in the field. Other investigations have demonstrated that environmental studies (DeFelice and Rinaldo 1994;Steele and Stier 2000), women's studies (Intner and Futas 1996;Westbrook 1997), the study of communications, information, and library (Wilson and Edelman 1997), as well as social work (Jacoby, Murray, Alterman and Welbourne 2002) are examples of interdisciplinary programs within academe that fall between the cracks in terms of adequate collection development in libraries. While such research has documented the identification and impact of such gaps, there has been little research to investigate interdisciplinary activity within single departments.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Border Crossing in a Research University

Bartolo

Wicks

Ott

2002

Collection Management

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As researchers continue to probe across disciplinary boundaries in their work, it is essential for research libraries to support their need to consult, learn, and analyze information resources that are far afield. This support is increasingly difficult to provide during fiscally tight periods yet today's stretched economic climate may help libraries facilitate cooperative ventures where they might occur. Our exploratory study reports on a university-wide collection monograph approval profiling project undertaken in a research library and focuses on the results with its Geography Department. Analysis of the approval profile for books to be purchased by Geography for its faculty and students can provide guideposts to actively nurture interdisciplinary information environments within and across disciplinary boundaries.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Border Crossing in a Research University

Bartolo

Wicks

Ott

2002

Collection Management

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“…Collection evaluation continued to receive considerable attention during the year. Dobson et al (1996) analyzed the collection evaluation problems associated with interdisciplinary fields, while Intner and Futas (1996) focussed specifically on evaluation problems in Women's Studies. Wood (1996b) provided a detailed overview of the Conspectus, explaining why he considers it an effective collection assessment tool.…”

Section: Collection Evaluationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The collection development literature of 1996: a bibliographic essay

Nisonger

1998

Collection Building

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This bibliographic essay, which reviews the collection development literature published during 1996, is organized into sections covering: bibliographic work; general and miscellaneous works; access and document delivery; collection development policies; materials budgets and budgeting; collection evaluation; collection development for specific subjects, audiences, or formats; electronic resources; use studies; collection development administration, organization, and staffing; and serials collection management. More than 150 items are included in the review.

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“…These library classification systems are large-scale, hierarchical examples of human categorization that are directly accessible and much more amenable to computational analysis than the category systems that all of us carry around in our heads. Focusing on library classification also allows us to connect our approach with a large body of existing work in the library and information sciences devoted to uncovering and mitigating bias in the LCC (Angell & Price, 2012 ; Howard & Knowlton, 2018 ; Intner & Futas, 1996 ; Kam, 2007 ; Rogers, 1993 ), the DDC (Higgins, 2016 ; Kua, 2008 ; Olson & Ward, 1997 ; Westenberg, 2022 ), or both (Mai, 2010 ; Zins & Santos, 2011 ). Category systems, especially more formal systems like library classifications, are often perceived as neutral or objective, making it all the more important to develop methods that enable us to quantify and thus acknowledge and address the biases that may be implicit in these systems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In general, the LCC and DDC systems have been found to be biased and unsystematic in their coverage of non-western religions and racial groups (Westenberg, 2022 ; Zins & Santos, 2011 ) and both systems are biased in their categorization of non-western languages and literatures (Higgins, 2016 ; Howard & Knowlton, 2018 ; Kua, 2008 ). In addition, both systems struggle to represent topics related to women and women’s studies, and these topics are often restricted to limited sets of categories that are scattered across the classification scheme (Intner & Futas, 1996 ; Olson & Ward, 1997 ). We thus apply our methods to two case studies of bias.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying Bias in Hierarchical Category Systems

Warburton,

Kemp,

et al. 2024

Open Mind

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Categorization is ubiquitous in human cognition and society, and shapes how we perceive and understand the world. Because categories reflect the needs and perspectives of their creators, no category system is entirely objective, and inbuilt biases can have harmful social consequences. Here we propose methods for measuring biases in hierarchical systems of categories, a common form of category organization with multiple levels of abstraction. We illustrate these methods by quantifying the extent to which library classification systems are biased in favour of western concepts and male authors. We analyze a large library data set including more than 3 million books organized into thousands of categories, and find that categories related to religion show greater western bias than do categories related to literature or history, and that books written by men are distributed more broadly across library classification systems than are books written by women. We also find that the Dewey Decimal Classification shows a greater level of bias than does the Library of Congress Classification. Although we focus on library classification as a case study, our methods are general, and can be used to measure biases in both natural and institutional category systems across a range of domains.1

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The role and impact of library of congress classification on the assessment of women's studies collections

Cited by 12 publications

References 1 publication

Border Crossing in a Research University

Border Crossing in a Research University

The collection development literature of 1996: a bibliographic essay

Quantifying Bias in Hierarchical Category Systems

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