Here’s a story from the Portland (ME) Post-Herald about a Maine-based non-profit group that is helping to place special needs titles in libraries across the state.
Since February, the Jeremiah Cromwell Disabilities Center has delivered books to 55 libraries, mostly in rural Maine. The center hopes to reach the state’s remaining 75 libraries through pending grants.
Included in the collection are titles about Down Syndrome, Autism, Asperger Syndrome, Fragile X and many other diagnoses and disabilities. Most of the titles are aimed at school-aged students, but librarians have found that parents of special needs kids are grateful for the books.
They’re there but you can’t find em
Although it’s wonderful that this group is placing books about “Down Syndrome, Autism, Asperger Syndrome, Fragile X and many other diagnoses and disabilities” in their collections…just try finding them by searching a catalog using Library of Congress Subject headings which either don’t include these or call them by some obscure latin name…
Sanford Berman’s catalog used terms for disabilities and diseases that we’d actually use to look for materials about them.
Not so sure about that
Although I agree with you about the arcane language used in LOC, and am a big Sandy fan, I think you’re stretching it in this case. These are all easily searchable via our catalog. When doing instruction for patrons I tell them to never use subject searches, unless they really know their stuff. Keyword searching seems to get around a lot of this problem.
Also, as someone who coordinates a special Down Syndrome collection in our library, I am a big believer in bibliographies and pathfinders.
Re:Not so sure about that
It’s important to think about where the keywords come from.
Keywords are retrieved by a search engine (or cataloging software) which searches basic bibliographic information like the title, author and LC subject headings.
What if you are looking for an excellent book on families with disabled and non-disabled children called “The Normal One”?
The title does not say much about it’s content.
A search of the De-Bermanized HCL catalog retrieves the following incredibly incomplete and inadequate LC headings: “Brothers and Sisters” and (what I consider to be a discriminatory heading) “Problem children–family relationships”
Since keywords for inter-related materials come from the basic bibliographic information and vary widely, subject headings, bibliographies and pathfinders are created by people who have found those inter-relationships.
Berman has an excellent article on the inadequacies of keyword searching in U*N*A*B*A*S*H*E*D Librarian. If his catalog was still available on the internet (as it should be) a search of it would show the value of what librarians do when we use
our intelligence to create a “path� toward inter-related materials for our clients.