Ethical Questions in Name Authority Control. Edited by Jane Sandberg, Sacramento, CA: Library Juice Press, 2019. 410 p. $35.00 softcover (ISBN 978-1-63400-054-3).

Cataloging ethics have received significant attention in recent years, notably via a series of events and discussions held under the umbrella of the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) Cataloging and Metadata Management Section (CaMMS) exploring the potential development of a code of cataloging ethics. At the same time, the “critlib” (critical librarianship) movement has grown, creating both virtual and physical spaces for exploring social justice principles in the context of library work.1 Catalogers have initiated conversations about social justice in metadata work under the “critcat” banner.2 The publication of Ethical Questions in Name Authority Control is timely in this environment, where both ethics and social justice are leading concerns for many catalogers and metadata professionals.

Editor Jane Sandberg sets the stage for the eighteen essays comprising the book by framing name authority work as storytelling in which catalogers have power over the people they describe. Catalogers “seek out these stories, decide which stories to include in an authority record” and “sometimes tell a story of their own within an authority record” (1–2). Sandberg’s framing is apt; taken as a whole, the book’s essays successfully make the case that cataloger choices in name authority control must be understood as ethical choices, requiring critical thought and careful consideration of both cultural context and impact on the people being described.

Several major themes recur throughout the book. One theme is the tension that exists between the needs of the information user (which catalogers have historically strived to center in metadata creation, and which may be best served by providing the fullest possible descriptions of creators) and the needs of the people being described (who may have substantial privacy and safety concerns, especially if they are members of oppressed groups). Another major theme is the idea that authority record creation should be a process of collaboration and dialogue with creators, rather than a solitary exercise for the cataloger. This conception is closely tied to ideas of consent and self-determination in which creators have a substantial voice in how they are represented in library catalogs. Related is the idea that an individual’s concept of self—manifested through name, gender, and relationship with dominant cultures and languages (among other characteristics—may change over time, meaning that data recorded in authority records cannot be considered fixed at the time of the authority record’s creation.

The volume is thoughtfully arranged into five broad sections. The first section, “Self-Determination and Privacy,” features four papers that illuminate the ethical concerns around authority control for individuals who may not wish to have their public identities and private identities explicitly related, whether they are zine creators, outsider artists, women, or people identifying as sexual or gender minorities. Fox and Swickard’s opening essay, “‘My Zine Life is my Private Life’: Reframing Authority Control from Detective Work to an Ethics of Care,” serves as an excellent entry point for the entire volume, effectively introducing many themes and concepts that will resurface throughout the book.

The second section of the book, “Impacts of Colonialism,” comprises only two papers, but both offer provocative explorations of their respective topics: Native American name authorities and the representation of Kurdish people and Kurdistan in authority records. Elzi and Crowe, writing on issues with Native American name authorities, combine a concise explanation of framework and theory with a concrete case study, making their paper an accessible entry point in a volume where many contributions could be tougher going for readers not already versed in social justice and critical theory.

The entire first section’s essays provide useful background for the book’s third section, “Gender Variance and Transgender Identities,” which delves deeper into the issues of self-determination and representation raised in earlier chapters. The five papers in this section engage with various aspects of the representation of gender in authority records, frequently focused on the Program for Cooperative Cataloging’S (PCC) guidance on that topic. Some of the authors in this section of the book, notably Adolpho and Polebaum-Freeman, take a confrontational, even polemical, tone as they describe how existing authority standards and guidelines may harm transgender, non-binary, and other gender-minority people, especially when applied by cisgender catalogers working in a culture where cisgender privilege is a constant. These critiques are uncomfortable but effective and deeply thought-provoking reading. Also in this section, essays by Shiraishi and Wagner complement each other well, offering useful reconsiderations of the concept of accuracy as it applies (or not) to personal identities, both current and historical. The remaining paper in this section, Cohen’s “Free to Be . . . Only He or She: Overcoming Obstacles to Accurately Recording Gender Identity in a Highly-Gendered Language,” describes issues surrounding gender markers in the Hebrew language, and offers a welcome and necessary non-Anglophone perspective.

“Challenges to the Digital Scholarly Record” is the title of the book’s fourth section. The three essays here offer perhaps less thematic unity than some of the book’s other sections, but each is a substantial exploration of a timely topic. Arastoopoor and Ahmadinasab’s paper describes the difficulties of accurately representing the identities of Iranian scholars across library catalogs and indexing databases. Like Cohen’s paper in the preceding section of the book, it is refreshing to have a non-North American focus. Panigabutra-Roberts offers an exhaustively researched summary of the advantages and disadvantages of several researcher identifier systems. While less obviously engaged with the overall theme of the book, Panigabutra-Roberts’s chapter is indispensable for anyone seeking to understand the current researcher identifier landscape. Tillman’s “Barriers to Ethical Name Modeling in Current Linked Data Encoding Practices” refutes the claim that linked data implementations will solve the problems of ethical representation inherent in current authority control models and practices. Tillman allows that linked data has potential to alleviate some concerns but emphasizes that this potential cannot be fulfilled without careful consideration of how to draw equivalencies across ontologies and solutions to address the scalability of linked data services. Tillman’s chapter may be challenging reading for those who are less familiar with linked data concepts, but it is well worth the effort.

The book’s final section, “Emancipatory Collaborations,” offers three essays that describe projects in which catalogers and metadata creators attempted to address many of the issues raised in previous chapters. These case studies, describing a project to eliminate racist language in archives, a collaborative model of authority work that engages creators in dialogue, and a project to incorporate multiple languages and scripts for Inuit speakers in Nunavut, offer useful models that could inform similar projects that catalogers might undertake to meet the needs of their own communities.

Taken as a whole, Ethical Questions in Name Authority Control is an important and well-timed contribution to the literature. It offers both theoretical and abstract explorations of the issues based in critical theory as well as practical suggestions and models for taking action. The book will be especially useful for catalogers, metadata creators, and systems librarians engaged in creating and managing authority data. But the book is recommended for anyone seeking to expand their understanding of ethical concerns and grapple with social justice issues in library metadata.—Stacie Traill (trail001@umn.edu), University of Minnesota

References

1. “Critlib: Critical Librarianship, In Real Life & on the Twitters,” http://critlib.org. See also the #critlib hashtag on Twitter.
2. See the #critcat hashtag on Twitter.