embedded
when library and creative work collide: three white-out poems on authority control
Librarians often reference the idea of “authority control,” when determining how best to organize and describe materials for access. It is a useful idea – one which allows us to group like things in ways that allow users to make serendipitous topical connections – but one which is inherently susceptible to bias.
While working with a group of library colleagues to propose a change to the Library of Congress “authorized subject heading,” for the Tulsa Race Massacre, I spent a great deal of time contemplating the following language from the Subject Authority Cooperative Program (SACO) Participants’ Manual:
“For newly emerging topics and disciplines, it is not always easy to find consensus among authorities as to what term should be used for the topic. Generally, prefer current American usage for a concept. In cases where there is no consensus among American authorities, SHM H 187 instructs catalogers to make an intuitive judgment based on available evidence...It is important to remember that sources consulted must be relevant to the topic being established.” [emphasis mine]
The following found poems came out of this contemplation. Each poem is a representation of the entire Merriam Webster definition of a relevant word, as well as one Oxford English Dictionary entry, both considered by SACO to be acceptable general authorities. Much of each definition is whited out so that it is impossible to see on the page. The poems thus presume their own authority, removing the words and language that did not serve them, inverting and thus implying the ways in which dominant white culture in America presumes and shapes authority; embeds it within our knowledge structures. The entire project is complicated by the fact that I am a white woman functioning within a disproportionately white field, attempting to invert white supremacist notions of authority from a place of whiteness. The poems are an exploration of what meanings surface through erasure, and how we might salvage our way towards more equitable and nuanced understandings of knowledge organization, creation, and authority in this country.
The proposed change was put forth in the year 2020, and was a request that the term Tulsa Race Riot be changed to the more currently used, relevant, and historically accurate Tulsa Race Massacre.
The proposal was successful.
in returning to the three white out poems above, I found three short poems I had originally appended to the beginning of each, which I include here separately.
current
tell me a river runs stagnant tell me the place all rivers arrive stay put don’t circle back through one anothers’ living bodies
American
if I ask you to imagine a rock which portion belongs to your mind and which mine
usage
to make firm to make reason to make law the enormous and moving multiplicity of now already eroding its face like breath like hands like tongues of water to stone
I’m doing a good job. You’re doing a good job.