140 librarypunk

Justin:
[0:27] I'm Justin. I'm Scala Communications Library. My pronouns are he and they.

Sadie:
[0:31] I'm Sadie. I work IT in a public library, and my pronouns are they, them.

Jay:
[0:36] I'm Jay. I'm a cataloging librarian, and my pronouns are he, him.

Justin:
[0:40] And we have guests. Would you like to introduce yourselves?

Katherine:
[0:44] I'm going to introduce myself in my language. Halito, Sahochifoyet, Catherine Witzig. Chetasea, Oklahoma, Atali. I just said, hello, my name is Catherine Witzig. I'm a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, and I am from Oklahoma. My pronouns are she and they.

Brandon:
[1:02] Hi, I'm also going to introduce myself in my language. I'm from the Simshian Nation, which is in the northwest coast of Alaska. I'm from Ketchikan, and I'm currently living in Amherst, Massachusetts, where I'm the Indigenous Studies librarian at UMass Amherst, and I use he, him pronouns.

Justin:
[1:33] Welcome.

Sadie:
[1:34] Welcome.

Justin:
[1:35] No, it's so great. I forgot to ask if you were going to do your introductions in your languages. Actually, something I wanted to ask from listening to the podcast you already did, when you're doing those sorts of introductions, is that something that, I guess, what's sort of the etiquette when people are asking to do their introductions that way in a group of a lot of Indigenous people? How did that come about? Is there a reason people do the go-round in their Indigenous languages? I don't know, I just feel like I'm missing some context.

Katherine:
[2:14] Yeah, so I think part of it is just an acknowledgement that Indigenous languages have historically been not allowed to be used in educational or public spaces. So it's definitely being used in a reclamative way. And also, I really enjoy that when people are introducing themselves in their language, obviously, there's some things that language brings to it, but you can tell a lot about a person by the things that they choose to include. In their introductions. So I think it's, it's a way to use the language in a reclamative way, but also really introduce who you really are. Yeah.

Brandon:
[2:55] And I think too, like, you know, there's, there's abridged versions, there's like your whole family line can be included. I mean, you're saying like in groups of indigenous people, yeah, people's introductions can go through their whole family line. So it's like, here's my grandma, here's my grandpa, my mom, and my dad, my cousins, and I think a lot of it is just to really allow different spaces, especially Indigenous spaces in the community, just to allow people to know where you're coming from, who your family is, so that it just brings that context to the relationships that you're in.

Jay:
[3:33] And I think that like sets us up nicely for what we're going to be like talking about today, like your work with indigenous metadata, because like different ways and systems of thinking about how do you describe something and for what, what purpose. And not to get whatever the indigenous version of Orientalism is, not to get Orientalist about it, but just what is it that different cultures, no matter where they're from, what do they choose, what do they value as important? Sometimes when I'm doing cataloging, it's like, when someone's searching for this, what would they use to search for it? What's important to them about this that needs to be in this record? And I think it's interesting how different that can be across cultures and stuff. So yeah, tell us, what do you do? Why are you here? What's the very cool thing that we're going to be talking about that you've been working on?

Katherine:
[4:29] So the very cool thing that we're going to talk about today is for the Program for Cooperative Cataloging, they have a task group for metadata related to Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Yes, it's a mouthful.

Jay:
[4:43] They always are.

Katherine:
[4:45] Always, always. But Brandon and I are co-chairing a group of 12, yeah, 12 individuals who are working in libraries with metadata in the US and Canada. And there's also a split between Indigenous folks and non-Indigenous folks, but just a lot of expertise in this group to kind of look at what has historically been done for metadata related to Indigenous peoples. And what can we do better? So we've got like a whole long list of things that we're responsible for, but we're just trying to look at Yeah, what we can do better and also take into account all these like local indigenous solutions that are happening because there are some incredible metadata solutions that are happening. And I don't think they get quite the spotlight that they should. So that's kind of what we're about. We're trying to like put a little light on these solutions.

Jay:
[5:48] Yeah, I'm always telling people when I was back when I was at UIUC, Catherine, you were the one who graduated from UIUC? Yeah, back when I was there and I did my thesis, all the research I was doing on like, okay, what are people doing with a community driven metadata? Because I was focused on like queer metadata. And like, at the time, the only like, work that was being done that was even close to what I was looking for was all indigenous projects, like indigenous metadata projects like this, have been sort of the forefront of this kind of project in a lot of like cataloging stuff for like a decade or more at this point. So you mentioned the program for cooperative cataloging and the catalogers in the room know what that is. But we do have a lot of non-library worker listeners as well as people who are in library school or who are thinking about being librarians and also just like all of our weird podcast friends that we make listen to this. So could you clarify what is the PCC? What is the program for cooperative cataloging? What do they do?

Katherine:
[6:48] So let's see. So I know Program for Cooperative Cataloging is an extension of the Library of Congress. And so they do a lot of the programmatic work of looking at standards. And so that's kind of the position that we were coming from. What kind of standards does Library of Congress have as far as like for their subject headings and for their classification schemas? I know if you work with Library of Congress, you know that Native American topics are all in E under American history.

Jay:
[7:24] The Indians of North America.

Katherine:
[7:25] Indians of North America are in E under American history. So there's kind of looking at that, how it's been relegated to the past, and ways that Library of Congress, as an institution that sets these standards for other institutions, ways that they can do better.

Jay:
[7:46] And how did y'all get involved with this project, with the PCC?

Katherine:
[7:52] I was actually on the American Indian Library Association listserv.

Jay:
[7:58] Yeah, I love them.

Katherine:
[8:00] Oh, they're fantastic. I'll be the treasurer next year. Yeah, I'm really excited. But they put out a call. They wanted people to apply for it. So I know I had to create kind of a statement, a little bit about my background, kind of like what I would be bringing to the project. And then from there, they kind of narrowed it down to the professionals that would be working on the project.

Jay:
[8:27] Very cool. And how about you, Brandon?

Brandon:
[8:29] Yeah, it was a similar, you know, similar experience. I hadn't really heard of PCC because I was still, you know, in library school when the call came out. But I think what really spoke to me was just that, you know, an organization with such close proximity to Library of Congress was even like, proposing that, you know, this work is like of vital importance. And we, you know, this is a call to, you know, make a contribution. And you know i personally do not really come from you know a metadata cataloging background but what i think is a really important part of this work and i think pcc in general is that pcc is is also about like a lot of collaboration across libraries worldwide to you know provide like affordable, but also inclusive cataloging for libraries all over the place. They do a lot of work. And for me, I think it's really about that collaborative piece. And that's what I have brought from my previous experience was how do you navigate these different institutions.

Brandon:
[9:32] These different entities as Indigenous peoples, as communities that have kind of a, I would say, an interest and a need to connect with these different types of collections. So it's like, how do you bring that like community oriented mindset to this type of work so for me i was like okay i this is a really great opportunity and i really want to collaborate with people from many different backgrounds to to focus on indigenous metadata so i was like sign me up let's do it so.

Jay:
[10:03] This kind of relates to a question i'll ask probably later into our recording but But something that I personally struggle with politically is why work with the PCC on this? Why the Library of Congress? Why do this through such an institution as opposed to – not to say that it's bad, but thinking about politically, why choose to do it through an institution as opposed to do it independently with another group, I suppose? Was that like a decision you had to think through in your head?

Katherine:
[10:40] For me, I thought about the way that it would be a kind of systemic change. And then also acknowledging that there are local solutions. My perspective is why not both? I think if we are going to have standards, which we are going to have standards, let's try to make them as inclusive as possible, but then also leave space. For having individual organizations and institutions to have solutions that do work for them. So it is something that I thought about because, you know, everything takes a long, long time. So that was something to think about as well. Like, even though we've been putting in a lot of this work, it's going to be a while before we can see the actual like fruits of our labor. So that was something that I considered as well, but I was really interested in having, Library of Congress be more inclusive in a way that's not like, you know, everybody's like Indians of North America and just like rubbing their temples. And it's like, you know, that's kind of like, that's not a great reflection of like who I want libraries to be. So that's where I was coming from when I was thinking about like, should I do this?

Brandon:
[12:02] Yeah i i think similar to to catherine especially you know regarding like the systemic potential for systemic change you know i know that i've seen advocacy like even before you know going into library school to to change subject headings to like make this change and how people are described at like you know what is seemingly like such a top level way and another part of like the collaborative work of this is like just seeing like how many people and like different libraries have already implemented so much change and being able to advocate for that and you know point to that this is a need because i mean like in some of the previous work i've done you know that's that's definitely a barrier for so many different librarians catalogers where it's like yeah like we would love to do this but like you know we got to address the harm of what's already there and then And also, you know, we're still kind of bound to LCSH and, you know, we can't, you know, there's not a whole lot of, you know, support.

Brandon:
[13:08] Staffing and just the ability to go and make all those changes. So it's like, how can we gather as many voices as possible? And people who are doing that work already locally on the ground, like, how can we bring that more to light? And so that's definitely what I was thinking about was like, how can we like, you know, Go up to the Library of Congress and be like, hey, all of this is happening and there should definitely be support and change.

Jay:
[13:35] Now yeah like i so i was on was it the pcc i don't even remember which fucking like ad hoc group it was on but i was on it with billy who i saw was part of this as well for like the the gender and the name authority records where we said don't do it.

Jay:
[13:52] And i remember one of the things that that was in response to was the first go around of putting gender in name authority records. There was a lot of good scholarship put out about that, including the Ethics in Name Authority book. And one of my homosaurus colleagues wrote a really great chapter criticizing the way that Library of Congress Name Authority views names and gender and relationships and how Western reflects a very specific worldview. And one thing I'm always curious about because i love this shit um is like because library of congress like is structured a certain way and reflects a certain worldview as you are adding and changing the terms to include and reflect better like indigenous topics like where that knowledge organization and ways of describing doesn't overlap well like what's that been like like How do you decide when you do endonyms versus exonyms or what language is used? Or how do you make it fit together?

Katherine:
[15:05] For me, I think about it a lot like weaving. So you've got the piece already there. You've got the warp and the weft and everything. You just kind of have to start wiggling things apart to make space. And that's the work of like we are prying it apart. so we can make the space to add those additional knowledges and those additional terms and those different ways of naming. And while it's somewhat unfortunate that we can't automatically put all these Indigenous languages in the authority files, I don't think that will happen. I think that the fact that we are getting the potential to include them or to just change these larger things, I think that we're kind of like tearing, we're tearing at it a little bit and making space for those indigenous threads. So that's kind of the way I think about it in pictures. So.

Brandon:
[16:08] Yeah, I love thinking about basket.

Katherine:
[16:11] Just like in general.

Brandon:
[16:12] But then also for this, because it's such a good metaphor, especially like for other ways of knowing it's like how to like things like, especially like for indigenous knowledge, you know, you have knowledge that has been developed for like, millennia, and then, you know, communities who have like disseminated that knowledge and like so many different ways. So yeah it's like how do you take something that you know is is seemingly like it seems like there could be you know an easy way to just oh well that's how this group describes them let someone just write it down like whatever is the easiest way to spell it but i think it misses so much especially you know for how certain communities view the world how indigenous peoples all over the world have come to build these knowledge systems and i think yeah it's just about like how do we do that justice in in libraries and there's not always an easy answer i mean especially you know for different groups i mean i can't speak for any particular group but if you know you know like tribal politics can get really tricky and then it's like how do you one person doesn't want it spelled that way but another person you know so i think i would say just to answer your question about how do these two things overlap or how do you integrate them?

Brandon:
[17:35] I think a lot of it, to me, what I've seen is absolutely that, being able to build relationships over a sustained period of time with Indigenous peoples.

Brandon:
[17:47] Whether that's through certain collections that are in an institution or a library. Yeah, it's like just bringing people in. It's maybe easier said than done, but I think that relationships being built, really important part of it.

Katherine:
[18:02] I think we also, sorry.

Jay:
[18:04] I'm sorry. Go ahead, Catherine.

Katherine:
[18:05] I think we also need to consider a policy of documentation and kind of the way that, you know, we give priority to literary warrant and kind of the idea that there is an origin point or person or publication. I think if we did a little more thinking about that and the ways that we can incorporate knowledge that, yes, has been developed over thousands of years. It's not going to have a single, like, let me cite this source. It's generations upon generations of knowledge. So, I mean, I think the policy of documentation is a great place to start.

Jay:
[18:48] Yeah, in the homosaurus, that's actually something we think about a lot as well as literary warrant versus this thing could exist, so what if we made a term for it, right? Like this sort of almost like a making space for something for when it shows up instead of instead of waiting and therefore like kind of creating the the world ontologically as it would be cool to be i also really love that weaving metaphor that you use because i feel like people view controlled vocabularies as this rigid set in stone thing and in certain ways i think they are If we get all critical theory about this, things are defined by what they're not, all boundaries necessitate policing, all the things that we say on here every other episode, right? But control vocabularies change all the time. Terms get added, terms get changed, terms get updated, new relationships are formed between terms. Like all of the time, there's a reason why libraries pay third parties to do all of their authority control in their ILSs for them because it changes so often and it's a huge pain in the ass.

Jay:
[19:59] Right. So like these things are living documents, you know, they're living things and sort of showing how like these things can change. They do all the time already. Like we're not, y'all aren't doing anything necessarily novel or unique by adding stuff to a vocabulary that gets stuff added to it. But I, I feel like people have this idea about LC in particular. So I really like that weaving, like pulling stuff apart metaphor.

Katherine:
[20:28] Well, and I think it's really helpful to you, to what you were saying about they have this idea of what Library of Congress is like or kind of the attitudes that they portray. I think this work with PCC is an excellent opportunity to potentially change some of those perceptions and kind of move in a way that is being more responsive. I think in many ways, it's still reactive.

Jay:
[20:54] Because we've.

Katherine:
[20:56] Had Indians of North america for a very long.

Jay:
[20:58] Time um but um i.

Katherine:
[21:02] Think i think there's there's motion and movement and i'm feeling that and so i'm excited to like help change this kind of stagnation that they that they've had regarding indigenous topics.

Jay:
[21:16] I tend to jump on the mic very quickly so i'm just pausing see if anybody else wants to yap so i'm not yapping um brandon you mentioned, justice right and i was wondering if y'all would talk about like the concept of justice within metadata like does this is this work that you're doing a type of metadata justice or if not like what does metadata justice like actually look like to you two yeah.

Brandon:
[21:44] I think that's um you know the question of all of this is you know like how can we you know bring to light these other ways of knowing in a respectful way and in a reciprocal way too? How can we, as information professionals, be able to share accurate, trusted information.

Brandon:
[22:09] But then also, you know, allow indigenous communities, people to have, you know, more of like more of a control over how and, you know, where their cultural expressions, intellectual property, how that is stewarded. So, yeah, I think this group is definitely touching on, you know, these goals, I think, as Catherine was mentioning, like, you know, creating that space for this layer of justice. But, you know, I think, yeah, there's a whole lot of terms, you know, for example, in a lot of Indigenous communities, there are terms in Library of Congress, the broader terms are often misspelled, they're often inaccurate, or not even from the actual community, it's usually more of a colonial perspective and description. Description so it's like how you know where where can where does the justice start you know is i think it's all encompassing but you know it's addressing that harm and that's part of what our the pcc group that we're in is also working on is is drafting a couple statements to include in what we present who the pcc and eventually library of congress is you know the harm that some of these.

Brandon:
[23:22] Classification ranges have caused, especially, what is it, like E75 through E99, basically anything under the you know the term. Anything in that, I think there's a lot of, there's, a lot of need to correct those terms. And I think that's definitely part of doing communities justice for sure.

Katherine:
[23:45] Yes, it is absolutely metadata justice. I think, especially leaning on the idea of reciprocity, if the general populace as primarily English speakers would want information presented in a way that made sense to them, that they could read, that they could understand. Same way Indigenous communities want to see their information represented in a way that they understand that makes sense to them. So I think it's just, it's really trying to keep in mind that these are different communities, but they deserve the same respect as these larger communities. So I think it's really about doing what is right. And I think what's right is to let these communities define themselves and to use their own languages to describe themselves. And we should just respect that and use those terms. So absolutely metadata justice.

Jay:
[24:47] Hell yeah. And that, so one thing that I feel like sometimes people are surprised that I'm very critical about this is like this gets me thinking about like all the like sort of reparative cataloging projects that have been going on for like a couple years and you see them a lot with like people adding homosaurus terms but then there was also the the illegal aliens uh thing and then people changing that there's a lot of work where people will locally do stuff and i'm often kind of, critical of these projects not because i don't believe in what they're doing but because librarianship is still predominantly a white profession a lot of these are very white projects right and i'm always like well did you talk to the people in your community where you're deciding what the right word is like this was the whole reason behind my fucking master's thesis right I was like, have people talked to gay people at all when they decided that this word wasn't good for gay people, but this one is? Did they talk to a gay person? I don't know. And so I'm always like, what are they actually in contact with these communities when they're doing reparative projects? Arthur, please don't get on my desk. There's a bunch of stuff on it, buddy. My cat's breathe. I want to crawl all over your laptop now. It's okay, buddy. Come on. Here we go. This is Arthur. He's very sweet.

Katherine:
[26:16] Hi, Arthur.

Jay:
[26:18] Please don't show your butt there we go, and so yeah i'm always just like like you know obviously a white librarian's doing reparative projects isn't in and of itself inherently bad right but i'm always like what's the sustainability is this a one-time project you got a grant for but that's gonna end as soon as the cataloger who's doing it goes to another job or the money runs out or you hit a snag or something or did you talk to people like at all ever so like how can like especially like people who are not indigenous like how can we when we're maybe identifying these problems in our own library catalogs in our communities like how do we like work with like the communities in question like how do we empower those communities who are not dominant and librarianship. Like, how do we actually repair this relationship to make these reparative projects better?

Katherine:
[27:18] I will say something that I have run into as an indigenous information professional is sometimes you are the only indigenous person in the room. And sometimes it's that's enough for some people. They've asked me and that done. But I mean, there are over 500 distinct tribal nations in the United States alone. And so I can't be a representative of my own tribal nation, much less over 500 others. So I think it needs to be a constant conversation. And that also lends itself to the sustainability of the project. Because like you said, if you're repairing those relationships, it's a relationship that should be reciprocal and fulfilling. So I think to start with, kind of think about things that your institution can offer to these communities. Instead of thinking about what knowledge can these communities give to me to make my metadata better, think about like, oh, this is knowledge for which they should be compensated. They should be compensated for their time and for their wisdom. And I think there are a lot of people that forget about that, that this is still knowledge and expertise.

Katherine:
[28:45] So I think that definitely needs to be acknowledged. And that will help kind of treat it as like professional relationship. But then it can be like more than that. it can be a truly fulfilling bond if like you're able to consider these communities as communities of people so i think that's probably like the first place to start.

Brandon:
[29:13] Yeah yeah i really love what you said catherine because i think yeah i think there's like there's lot you know it's every every community that you're you know that that are that you're ever going to work with communicate with it's it's always going to be different there's going to be different needs there's going to be a whole different set of stages of where you know work is out especially regarding like cultural heritage things i mean you know a lot of tribes nations and at least in what is the u.s there's so much Shit. Like inundation of just requests from all sorts of different things so i think another component just to to add to what you're saying catherine too is like kind of that prep work if you want to call it that or kind of pre-relationship building so that when communities do you know come to a particular library or or you individually that there's at least some foundations.

Brandon:
[30:15] Some scaffolding in the library that addresses some of these concerns. Because I want to put a plug in for things like the protocols for Native American archival materials, which has fabulous outline for how to approach this work. Things from building relationships with community, like how to make sure your collections are accessible and to communities, providing context for where your collections came from you know just just aware general awareness of like indigenous uh related issues you know so that there that there's already this this general awareness of that these types of resources exist that institutions can implement and now that's definitely not always easy because i think going back to what we were saying about being like a sole indigenous librarian it can be really really challenging uh to have to continuously advocate for something that not everyone either a understands or b cares about because you know there's a whole you know depending on the size of the library there's so many different things going on and it can be a lot but you know like for me i would say that like tapping into the resources that exist and framing them as a necessary component to do this work because I think a lot of libraries and things are really interested in DEI I mean we'll see what happens in the next year with all that but it's like there's so much interest and or I think there's this like.

Brandon:
[31:44] Desire to have like a really shiny like you know initiative we're doing the good thing yeah we're doing it yay um oh november's over okay no more native americans like you know it's like that that's just one month and i think like you know for indigenous people it's like we're indigenous all the time like it's it's happening all the time so i would say that like you know things like implementing protocols and framing those in a way that it's like we got to like implement this because otherwise those relationships those things that you that the library like wants to to show are are not actually going to happen in any meaningful way so i think like seeing what's already out there in in our field because there is there is a lot of stuff out there but it's about you know just seeing like kind of what how how to implement and just raise i think general awareness is a component which.

Jay:
[32:41] I think is terrifying for a lot of catalogers since the stereotype of catalogers is that they're just shut-ins who forget that.

Brandon:
[32:47] Patrons exist.

Jay:
[32:49] Right? I feel like this is so important to remember that we're cataloging for people, right? And that like we are like where I work cataloging as part of public services, right? Like it's like it's its own department, but it's under public services, right? So it's like I am a public services librarian, even though I do cataloging. It's like the whole like there is no such thing as like we're all front facing kind of work, right? And to also forge relationships with people who aren't in cataloging and metadata. That's how you even start doing community building. Sadie does IT stuff. What are some IT considerations for the various systems that might need to change? Or maybe you look for a new system to accommodate whatever, right? But like you wouldn't know that if you didn't like talk to the other people who worked in your library like it's like step one know who else works in your library and what they do and how their work intersects with yours like maybe you should do that first absolutely because that's that's.

Katherine:
[33:55] Knowing that's knowing the assets that you have.

Jay:
[33:59] Um these.

Katherine:
[34:00] Are efforts that we can all do together. You just got to know what you have already, what you need to go forward. And I think that's just, I think sometimes people forget, at least for me, I do work with the Oklahoma Library Association, and I do Tribal Libraries Committee. So I think sometimes people forget that Tribal Libraries Committee is not just about tribal libraries. It's not just an over there problem. I think the spiel that I try to give whenever I talk about it is like, we support Indigenous communities and librarians supporting Indigenous communities, which is everyone in the state of Oklahoma. Every librarian who works in Oklahoma is serving Indigenous communities. So I think it's not, even if you're not Indigenous, there are things that you can do to advocate for Indigenous issues and Indigenous knowledges. because, Indigenous people have a lot to bring to the table. We just don't always get equal opportunities to do so.

Jay:
[35:07] Yeah, like I am. So when I was, I did a project with the American Indian Library Association back in 2018. And we talked about the, we did a poster about it at the Tribal College Librarians Institute. I don't know if you've ever been to that, Catherine.

Katherine:
[35:20] We haven't, but I've heard about it. Yeah.

Jay:
[35:23] It's cool, but there were things where you wouldn't think, that's not a tribal college, like Montana State University, which is where it was held. It's like, no, because something doesn't have to be on a tribal land or anything to be a tribal college or to serve indigenous communities. Right. Like a state university of Montana was included in that institute. Right. So I think that's a good way of reframing it, that every library is serving Indigenous communities, not just tribal libraries.

Justin:
[35:59] Yeah, and just to bring in my bummer drummer segment, if you go to a land-grant university, you go to a university that is funded on the theft directly of Indigenous people's lands. So go to, what is it, Land Grab?

Jay:
[36:16] Yeah, I think it's Land Grab. I can find it real quick.

Justin:
[36:18] Yeah just just so you know if you do go to a land grant university no matter where in the country that is based on the expropriation of land and sale of that land and that's where your your library your university's funding comes from is the sale of land thousands of miles away sometimes.

Jay:
[36:37] Let's put the link in the chat.

Justin:
[36:39] Sorry i just haven't been talking enough and i'm like oh oh i think i know i think i know okay because jay does all the metadata nerd stuff and i um i just jump in with the bummer stuff well.

Jay:
[36:51] I'm wondering like for our non-exclusively metadata people and i guess brandon that includes you like how does this affect your daily work as a librarian who doesn't do cataloging and metadata primarily like sadie justin like all y'all i.

Brandon:
[37:06] Mean you know like i so i did a project before the job i'm in now that focused solely on making a collection about Indigenous literature more accessible to communities, Indigenous communities more specifically, but also, you know, the general public and researchers.

Brandon:
[37:23] And part of that was being able to include the nation that a particular author was from, because that's not something that you can just, you know, take from, you know, LC, that that was definitely a local intervention. And I think that, you know, for me, especially, you know, wanting to build these relationships of communities, it's like part of that is being able to tell communities, okay, this is what is from your community. This is like what we have. Here it is.

Brandon:
[37:51] And it can be challenging to locate resources, especially if they are not written in the right way. But it can also be harder to find like more like resources written by Native people. So I think that was something that I ran into a lot was, you know, people would, you know, students would ask, where can I find like books on, you know, the Navajo Nation or the Native people? And, you know, sometimes it could be hard to locate that type of information. But I think being able to include that these like local author notes, I think really helped consolidate that in the catalog. And it made it just that much easier. So I'm like, you know, if we can just keep this going, like add more accurate terms, like this would be better. Because people will ask me frequently for specific books by Indigenous groups. And sometimes, yeah, I really have to dig hard because there's not all this different cross-referencing and these different types of notes that actually help tell who this community is.

Sadie:
[38:58] Yeah. And I'm in public libraries. I've never worked in an academic library, so I'm not very familiar with Library of Congress at all and how it works. I'm just not an academic. But one of the libraries I worked at when I was in public service had a Native American collection, specifically because we had a library that was on and the property and the building and stuff was Native, the local tribe owned. So it was part of their studies program too because it was also a college it was a whole it was a whole campus but some of i just remember shelving and some of those dewey decimal numbers got so long because they had to get so specific across like different nations and whether or not it was addressing like the language or addressing the history or you know whether or not it was an oral history versus like a written. So like there was just these like two shelves that were just like the first five or six numbers were all the same and then it just got tinier and tinier like on the spine as it went.

Sadie:
[40:03] And I just think about that and like how very little room that is in this giant wide system. And you know, this, And these two shelves were probably the only places that some of these books were. So they're like skinny little things that are bound with the plastic ring binding kind of thing.

Jay:
[40:30] Oh, not the ring binding.

Sadie:
[40:32] Yeah, no, that was really hard to shelf. But I can imagine the ILL for some of these materials is probably nuts because some of them probably are very, very unique. Some of them are probably really rare. Yeah, I don't know. It's just the breadth of the materials is – I lost my train of thought, sorry. But yeah, so I see what you mean, Brandon, is it's like there's just very, very few sources of certain things. And it can be when you're trying to acknowledge a very specific local tribe, it probably gets even harder. And I was curious, because you guys are going to be working with metadata, and maybe this isn't a problem in Library of Congress. Like you said, Catherine, there are over 500 nations. I was curious, is that just federally recognized nations? Because I live in Washington state and there are several non-federally recognized nations as well. How do you reach out to those people to build relationships when they maybe don't have a recognized government or don't have that sort of thing? What ways can we support those sorts of communities?

Katherine:
[42:00] That is a really good question. I think something that can be really beneficial is enhancing your presence in the communities. I think that's always really helpful for starting partnerships and then building partnerships, because I think it's really easy to just, especially the role that public education and libraries have played in the assimilationist practices of the federal government, like it's easy for there to be a mistrust of these institutions. But if these institutions are making a concerted effort to be a part of their communities, to build in their communities, then I think that's an excellent first step for like building that trust.

Katherine:
[42:52] And I think it's just a part of like knowing these Indigenous communities and just kind of getting the pulse of the local Indigenous community, I think will be really beneficial because I know that I am in a rather urban area, but we flock together because we're creating that community and especially when we are not on the land of our people it's really important to find that community wherever you can so if if there are staff members who are indigenous that's expertise you can absolutely lean on and then just kind of getting a sense of like community events that are indigenous centered and then just kind of like being in that space, I think is probably a big first step.

Brandon:
[43:43] Yeah, I think the Library of Congress, they hired somebody to kind of oversee, well, yeah, there's a lot that they're potentially overseeing, but I'm like, we're rooting for you girls. But I think part of what I've kind of been hearing and gotten the impression is that, yeah, there's definitely a lot of different communities to talk to.

Brandon:
[44:11] 576 right now federally recognized and then i think there's probably 400 plus you know non-federally recognized or state recognized those numbers you know up or down but i think that yeah i think what katherine is saying is this yeah i agree like i think being able to just get a sense of what's going on in a local setting and being able to understand you know who's like what's going on what are the needs what are the different groups that are around i think can be a really important starting point but you know yeah i think there's there's a huge i think for that the project that i mentioned earlier was that you know in this particular collection it was like there's all all over like yeah i mean there's so many different groups represented in this particular collection there's not one particular focus so i mean we could spend like the rest of our lives trying to map out all the different communities and languages and things that are here but what we decided to do is.

Brandon:
[45:15] Like let's actually focus on like where we are right now first like that's that's going to be the first like three years is just trying to understand like the scene in our area uh you know what's going on like who can we talk to who can we meet with like who can we just invite at the library who can we you know go out and visit and and see their communities if you know nothing to do with the library nothing to do with their work but who can we just like go and like see and what's going on like what are what are you up to like you know yeah like i think just just treating it like that is really important just like people you know because i think that that's definitely a big part of it too is just like yeah really understanding like what communities or living on a day-to-day basis, I think it's important too.

Jay:
[46:06] And that's something librarians or library workers, no matter what their function is, can do every day, even outside of official grant-funded projects or whatever. This is something we all can and should be doing all the time, whatever that looks like for our specific job. Let's see, let me look through the notes here. Thank you. Sort of related to something we talked about earlier, but I think comes into play here a little bit, is sort of like when you are doing this kind of work, especially like the kind of reparative LC work, Like, when do you decide it is worth it to correct or repair this LC classification or subject heading versus this is better suited by another vocabulary? Because obviously, this is something in the homosaurus, for example, homosaurus is not meant to exist on its own. It is meant to exist alongside other vocabularies like ELSI. And sometimes terms overlap directly. Sometimes they're slightly different. Sometimes they're reparative, sometimes not. Sometimes there's just a different angle to it. So how do you view when do you correct versus when you think it's better suited to another vocabulary?

Brandon:
[47:32] Yeah, I think just to just go back to the program specialist for indigenous peoples that I mentioned that Library of Congress recently onboarded. I know that that was like a really big part when they were advertising the job. And now that person is there, that that's a huge part of it. They're like, we also need, you know, want to know, like, at the end of this, like, should we just pivot? Like, is, you know, LCSH the place for this? Or should we, you know, transition to demographic terms? Like, is there a different place for this that's going to be more impactful? Or, yeah, that was one of the pertinent questions that I kept hearing. And I'm really curious to see, like, what's going to happen with that.

Katherine:
[48:19] I think what's interesting, too, is that there is the question of potentially demographic terms. But these are independent sovereign nations, so they're also political entities. So that's another element that kind of complicates that a little bit. But I think there is benefit in repairing Elsie.

Katherine:
[48:47] But I am so strongly for local solutions to be representing these communities. And I would love to see some larger, just indigenous vocabulary emerge that maybe Elsie can take some cues from or something. Because i think there's there's a lot there's a lot to do so i i can see how that could be overwhelming and especially with the kind of time that it takes to develop things at this larger institutional level i i think they they have to work together um i don't think there's there's a way that, I had a question when I was at the National Information Standards Organization conference that was related to globalization.

Katherine:
[49:43] And I think it's a similar question of do we aim for complete standardization or do we simply rely on local solutions? I think there needs to be global solution that is kind of a little bit more bare bones. And then the local solutions can fill in the gaps and be the meat on the bones. That's kind of how I see it, especially because we have so many different communities and so many different knowledges. I'd love to see them emerge in interesting ways.

Justin:
[50:18] Yeah, this is what I think about. This is a long-standing problem in archival metadata where there's a lot of local solutions, but then people don't share their local solutions. And everyone's like, how can we get EADs to be linked? How can we do all this stuff? And I feel like I'm kind of out of the special collections archives game, so I don't know what the state of the discussion is. But I think with these extremely local things, there still hasn't been an entire solution to it. Although in the scholarly communications field, there's just what I call like think locally, fuck globally, which is you get all of your local stuff and you push it as far as possible. You don't hoard this stuff to yourself. Everything you make is, it reflects your institution, but you want everyone in the world to know what you're doing.

Justin:
[51:15] Yeah. So that's always in the back of my mind. I never get to use that in like professional conference presentations, but that literally is how I think about it is just like think locally, fuck globally. Like you just, you get it out there. And so, yeah, I think if there, you know, I think this is a dual problem of very local solutions. And again, because like, you know, all the different nations, you know, the politics, you know, I think one thing people need to realize is indigenous people are people. And therefore.

Justin:
[51:57] I know, right. And therefore, just as unfortunately stupid as all of their Anglo counterparts sometimes and kick off, like, you know, make things as annoying as possible. So there's there's not always going to be consensus on these things and so there there needs to be a way where cultural institutions can push out their data and it's it's not just tooling always it's sort of i think a lot of it is attitude i think a lot of it is we're going to fix this locally but who would care about what we're doing and i think the attitude is the major problem because The tools are out there to push this metadata outwards. It's just we haven't quite figured out or agreed upon how we're going to do that. But the tools, I think, actually are there.

Jay:
[52:44] This is why open documentation is so important. And cataloging departments should have their entire everything online freely available to people except for private information. Because do you know how often I go to fucking Yale libraries, like little cataloging wiki, especially when I used to work in a music library? They got all their shit there. It's so useful. Even if it's only applicable to them, it's useful to see what other libraries are doing. Because it's like, why reinvent the wheel? You're not the first person in the world who's had to think about how do we implement this local vocabulary in this specific way or whatever. Libraries have done that before. We just need to be sharing our information with each other. Like, that's how I've learned most of my stuff. Like, what I know on the job is, like, finding out what other libraries have done when they post it online on their websites or they make their, like, confluence wikis public or a libguide or something. Like, even something as basic as that or, like, a GitHub repo or something is, I don't know, it's just really helpful in general.

Katherine:
[53:51] No, I think that would be amazing. I would love to see just a way that we could just share all these ideas. Because I know, for example, someone I know from the Tribal Libraries Committee, they created a classification system for their library. They're just one public library. And it was based on the Brian Deere classification system that came out of Canada. So it's like, when we're sharing these ideas, we can come up with other solutions that can just incorporate these really good ideas. So, no, I would love that.

Justin:
[54:27] Yeah. And on that of, again, just harping back to my point of, oh, someone won't care what we do. One thing my library started doing is the posters that we make for various months and programming and stuff. They're entirely specific to our university, but we put them in our repository and they get massive numbers because other librarians are out there going, what can I make? What can I do? So even if it's entirely specific to what you're doing, if you just put it out there, people are looking at it. People care. People like this stuff.

Katherine:
[55:00] That was my favorite part about for the PCC group. We did a survey to kind of get an idea of the things that were happening on the ground for these institutions and just getting to hear about all these different cool things that people are doing. And, you know, it's really helpful to have that kind of the survey as documentation of all these things. And then also we're getting to share that these bunches of people that fill out the survey also see that there are problems and we need additional staffing to address this at LC. That's how i frame it whenever i talk about whenever i was talking about the survey it was always like this will help us as documentation for making the case for making these improvements for increasing staff related to indigenous issues so yeah the documentation yes mm-hmm.

Jay:
[56:01] And for, cause I know what, something that comes up a lot in like in what, what I've read and like when looking into this around like indigenous metadata practices, the whole, you know, oh, let's make our documentation public information wants to be free. Like that kind of very you know western librarian like attitude can sometimes conflict with various like indigenous ways of knowledge sharing in an organization especially that have like restrictions on who can be what like this was the whole point of the mukatu like platform and there's those i forgot to look them up before the recording but lc like one of the smithsonian folkways is using these alternative knowledge labels as well instead of Creative Commons stuff. So in at least metadata and documenting these projects and stuff, when you run into these instances where how knowledge is shared and with whom conflicts with Western ideas of librarianship and knowledge, what has that looked like so far if you've come across it?

Brandon:
[57:10] Yeah um so i've been able to do a little bit of work with some of those labels that you mentioned yeah and one of one of the organizations local context there i think they've been around i think they you know moved to local context but i think now there's definitely like they're garnering like a you know pretty wide network of libraries and archives that really want to implement them and the great thing is is that there's like different stages of implementation so you know a library for example that i was at we were able to implement what is called the notices so not like a label but these notices that come pre-relationship building or pre like formal collaboration with an.

Brandon:
[57:59] Indigenous community so that there's at least like this visible awareness within the metadata and to even get that label in the actual catalog i don't even know if it's there still and that was like two years ago so you know it's like the compatibleness of these systems but there's also you know we were able to put it like on a website so that at least there's like this visible element to that like we this library is open to collaborating and i think that's really important and now that the way that they have it set up is that you have a notice and then a community can then reach out and then they the community decides what the actual label then is going to be and look it up localcontext.org there's different labels but i think that's a really great intervention especially in the metadata world where it's like here's something that the community decided and wants you to know about this particular organization. Resource.

Katherine:
[58:59] I haven't run into it myself.

Brandon:
[59:01] It's coming.

Jay:
[59:02] Yeah. Like, I remember when I was researching for my master's thesis, God, that was almost a decade ago. But like a lot of the studies and like published papers about this, a lot of them were coming out of New Zealand and like work with like Maori librarians and Maori libraries and museums and collections and everything. And that got me looking into librarianship in New Zealand, right? And they don't really have like the master's program and stuff like we do here in the States.

Jay:
[59:33] Instead, it's one of those things where you have to like register as a professional librarian, like with their library association like every year. And what you do to do that is you like map yourself against these competencies, right? And to be a librarian in New Zealand, like officially.

Jay:
[59:50] One of the competencies you have to be able to map experience or knowledge of or plans to learn about is indigenous knowledge organization and practices like you have to know that to be a librarian at all in new zealand and even like at the federal level like they have a lot of public information about how maori intellectual property concepts differ from like more western ideas of copyright and intellectual property which librarians also have to know it's usually around like licensing symbols and stuff but like just how knowledge organization and how it differs is like something that like all librarians in new zealand know at least at a very basic level and i'm like that would be just so dope if that is just something we could barely just like do you know anything cool like right you know like and you know what if in every like library school like in your library 101 class you have to take or whatever there's like a day you know like bare minimum like do people in library school learn about this stuff at all and it's not always i know in wisconsin they have a class on it or like a specialty, but...

Katherine:
[1:01:05] I would have loved that. I feel like when I was going through the program, it ended up being the one Indigenous person in the class. So I get to teach everyone about being Indigenous. And it's kind of exhausting. It is exhausting. But it was very interesting to have that kind of like motivation to frame all my all my inquiries in this indigenous way because it just wasn't happening elsewhere so that's that was my my schooling i was just like i'm gonna learn you a thing.

Jay:
[1:01:43] That's a major my one big criticism of the uiuc program is that it just does not have any indigenous focus stuff at least it didn't when i was there whereas university of washington's got a lot going on university of wisconsin madison's got a lot going on like come on illinois you're number one chop chop say do you have something to say.

Sadie:
[1:02:05] Yeah i just i i was just thinking like i feel like that that's kind of the boat that the land acknowledgement thing misses is that it's like it's the very very start of it's just you have to know whose land you're on to even begin, any of this kind of work right if you're going to do things locally and then there are people who are like what do you even here in washington where half of our things are named like from like lushoot seed or something like that like that nobody outside of washington can pronounce it's like they're still just like oh wait what do you what do you mean and i'm like how how did you miss that if you were born and raised here, because like, yeah, and I was reading my local tribe's page on their specific land acknowledgement advice. And it's like, it's because they were inundated with people going, I don't know how to do this. And so that is such a good resource to even start on. So like, I don't know, I've been thinking about this a lot lately too, because I've been actually digging through my local tribe's websites and resources and stuff.

Sadie:
[1:03:22] But yeah, the land acknowledgement thing is just like people are like, oh, one and done. I did the thing. And it's like, that's so bare minimum. And yeah, and then you get into what knowledge does that tribe or your local community actually have? Do you know anything about that? So yeah, that should be, especially as knowledge, like information professionals, like that should be way higher up there than it is.

Jay:
[1:03:52] Yeah, Sam Popovich, who has been a guest on this program, once gave me advice on Twitter because I was about to do a presentation, but I had seen criticisms doing land acknowledgements, especially from indigenous librarians I knew and other like indigenous folks in my circle. And so I was like, I feel like, like bad doing this because like, what is my university actually doing? I'm just like, this means nothing. Like, are there better things to do? And one thing Sam told me that he did, like as a white librarian and Sam's in Canada, right? Yeah yeah same as in canada was like instead of doing a land acknowledgement like if he couldn't like if whatever he was doing a presentation or something on if it didn't contain anything, about indigenous resources or indigenous people like if what he was talking about didn't touch on that at all then what would even be the point of doing a land acknowledgement if it wasn't if he wasn't even working on this stuff right so instead of doing that he was just like Everything I talk about has to be able to address this. Otherwise, it's just empty words.

Justin:
[1:05:04] And materiality, too. Where I live, the Istokana, the Carisaca Macrudo people, a tribe of Texas, not a federal tribe, most of the work they do is about environmental protection. It's like natural gas pipelines, SpaceX, you know, destruction of federally protected land, which is, you know, as you might know, if you know anything about the borders and Native peoples on the border, pretty much every protection Native people have on law gets waived at the border. So, like, the graves protections... All that stuff that gets waived so that people can build walls and stuff. And so what I would always do is say like, you know, Hey, they're fundraising. Here's the link. You know, I would just go into my universities, you know, like, Hey, we're going to learn about indigenous people day. And I'm like, hi, what's up? Here's the link of putting it in the zoom. Go put money in there. Go put, do something, please. So if you can doing a land acknowledgement, be like, and here's their PayPal and just hold up like a big QR code. I mean, like, seriously, like, do something.

Jay:
[1:06:18] That's actually what they did at the Music Library Association conference a couple years ago. They had a whole thing about, like, in, like, sort of rethinking land acknowledgments. And what they did instead was they just talked about, like, indigenous composers and musicians, both around St. Louis and in general, so that all of the librarians there could then go buy that stuff for their collection. And they were like, this is the title, this is the person. And they even had some of the composers there to like talk about the works and stuff. But that's how I learned about like, there was an opera composed by a Native American woman back in the early 1900s that was performed at the Met. I was like, shit, I didn't know that. That's fucking cool. And then I went and like, I want to buy this for my collection and stuff. But, and we ended up getting some of the stuff from some of the composers there. Like when, you know, because I learned about them there. So like that was one thing that conference did instead of like a conference sort of, oh, we're just going to do land acknowledgement. Like here, here's a whole session where you can learn about indigenous materials to buy for your library. And I was like, that's fucking cool.

Katherine:
[1:07:21] That is. That's amazing.

Jay:
[1:07:24] Music Library Association rules, actually. It's very cool. I miss it. I miss you. Let's see. Yeah, we've been going like an hour and a half now. Also that we don't want to keep y'all too long, I guess, is there sort of any final like thoughts y'all had or like things you want our listeners to know, especially, like I said, we have a lot of library school students or people interested in library school who listen to us. So is there anything you would want our audience to know about the work you're doing or ways that they can get involved, like anything like that?

Katherine:
[1:08:00] I think I would emphasize that indigenous knowledge is land-based and it's relationship-based and it has so much, wisdom that it brings. So I think, I don't think even non-Indigenous students should be afraid of, you know, using Indigenous sources or just trying to credit Indigenous styles. I think we, there needs to be a level of advocacy from non-Indigenous people. So I would say, have those conversations with Indigenous people that you know, everywhere you go, because there are so many of us, we all have great things to offer. So, and we're people. So.

Brandon:
[1:08:51] Yeah. I mean, you know, especially in library school, you know, I think I experienced this, and I'm sure many others have, where it's like, you can tailor your assignments to your particular interests and so if you're in a class and it seems like oh i don't think this could connect to indigenous people i would just encourage like you know maybe like yeah like how how would this impact indigenous community or indigenous collection that that's what i did i tried to tailor my assignments as much as possible to that and i will put in a plug for san jose state university they do offer an indigenous cultural institutions class and it was nice really really really informative and now it's taught i think if if not every semester at least every every you know fall or fall or spring so yeah i i think just being able to consider like how our work as information professionals how it might impact indigenous communities whether that's through collections development metadata you know community engagement just just thinking about it holistically not like it's some side project but like how how is it holistically in relation to the work that we do.

Justin:
[1:10:01] Yeah, and before I forget, I'm going to speak directly to the white people in the crowd particularly, is think of what kind of particularly, you know... In the upcoming few years, what kind of white person do you want to be is the question you should always have in the back of your mind. Like, what am I doing? Because, you know, whiteness is constructed. It is a power relation. It is not your ethnic identity. You had an ethnic identity and your family at some point gave it up in order to become white. Betrayal of whiteness is loyalty to humanity. So let's get that race traitering going on out there. And so yeah I don't mean to derail or anything from the rest of what everyone was saying but it was on my mind and I think it bears repeating go read Noah Ignatieff think deeply about, considering that this is librarianship and librarianship is very white think very deeply about what kind of white person you want to be and how that reflects in your practice.

Jay:
[1:10:59] Oh and everybody go join American Indian Library Association it's great.

Brandon:
[1:11:03] Yes yes yes yes is.

Jay:
[1:11:05] Yeah hype them up they're awesome give them your money.

Justin:
[1:11:08] And i think i got the traditional knowledge labels is that the licenses you were talking about the smithsonian okay so i've got that i've got that in the notes so that'll be there too because i'm not familiar with that because when you're talking about very cool yeah when you're talking about the maori thing because i've actually used new zealand quite a lot whenever you talk about like intellectual property because things that get trademarked have to go past like the like a trademark and branding board and there is always maori representation on there that has sort of like some veto power which kind of kind of exists in the united states in a very very different way in which like tribal nations own, intellectual property on things but it's not like it's not the same thing in which like, they have a seat at like the copyright office or whatever to be able to say like, no, this is not copyrightable because this is traditional knowledge or whatever. So it would be nice if we had something like that. And I'm sure, but that's, that's one of those instances in which like the government leading the way allows the profession. So it's one of those limitations of librarianship in the U S.

Jay:
[1:12:19] Yeah. Again, I learned about those at the music library association conference. I went to shouts out again.

Justin:
[1:12:25] Okay.

Jay:
[1:12:26] Cool.

Justin:
[1:12:27] Well, Catherine and Brandon, thanks so much for coming on. Is there anything you want to point people to? Social media, websites, anything like that? Or do you want people to leave you alone?

Brandon:
[1:12:40] I mean, no.

Katherine:
[1:12:46] So i'll probably share i have a link tree i have like my portfolio and it has like my linkedin and also my art because i do indigenous indigenous beadwork okay yeah shouts out so yeah i'll probably share that um and a quick yakoki fena thank you very much for having me on here and.

Brandon:
[1:13:10] Yeah i'd say you know i i liaise in my role as a librarian to indigenous studies i work you know support indigenous studies research so if anyone ever wants to you know talk more about that my email is bcastle at umass.edu but i think yeah i would also just like to say i'm thank you very much for having us this was really nice to talk about with you all so thank you so.

Sadie:
[1:13:33] Glad to have you and good night.