Wow, today. I found the best Venn diagram from Hope A. Olson comparing the “mainstream core” perspective offered through classifications like DDC and LCC and controlled vocabs like LCSH to what that “core” actually represents. Its a smaller set within the entirety of Everyone and limited to the following Boolean combination:

white AND male AND straight AND European AND Christian AND middle-class AND able-bodied AND Anglo

The result is a very tiny splotch within all of those concentric circles. It’s pretty awesome and I have needed this in my life before now.

I also got my hands on two separate thesauri for women’s issues (On Equal Terms: A Thesaurus for Nonsexist Indexing and Cataloging from 1977 compiled by Joan K. Marshall and The Women’s Thesaurus from 1987 edited by Mary Ellen S. Capek). I’m interested to see what the differences are between them. They are both in print but The Women’s Thesaurus might have been adapted for online use at Atria from the Institute on gender equality and women’s history in the Netherlands. I’m still figuring that out for sure.

I also sorted out various LGBTQ thesaurus sources from my readings (and in my head). There’s a classification scheme by Dee Michel and David Moore (International Gay and Lesbian Archives Classification System) and there’s another thesaurus from the Netherlands (A Queer Thesaurus: An International Thesaurus of Gay and Lesbian Index Terms) that has become a Linked Data vocabulary called Homosaurus.org. The College of the Holy Cross is now hosting that Linked Data vocabulary online and I still need to check it out some more but IHLIA in Amsterdam is using it to support online searching. I like their concept of supplying Broader Terms, Related Topics, Narrower Terms, and Used For in that visual way. I don’t think there’s a way to activate that without conducting a search first so you don’t start off with that help, but it is an example implementation of controlled vocabulary help.

I am also seeing that some controlled vocabularies are supplying connections to LCSH. The BC First Nations Subject Headings from the Xwi7xwa Library at the University of British Columbia is in PDF format online but identifies connected terms from LCSH. And the Lavender Library, Archives and Cultural Exchange in Sacramento, California has finding aids that include LC subject headings along with their own subject headings. The only reason I know anything about the Lavender Library is because the LGBTQ+ Library at Indiana University uses a classification system based on the one used at Lavender Library (called the LLACE Classification Scheme after the full name of the library) and they were awesome and shared it with me.

I’ve also encountered some vocabularies that are discussed but don’t seem to be available (at least not to me). EBSCO has a thesaurus for its LGBT Life resource but I cannot come up with the thesaurus no matter what I try so I don’t think we have access to that through my institution (we have access to the contents of LGBT Life but not the thesaurus). It was mentioned in one of my readings and would be good to see but it doesn’t look like an option for now.

My list of classification systems and controlled vocabularies is growing and getting a little more organized but I have more to review and learn about and a lot more to understand.