Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Coming Out Of The Controlled Closet: A Comparison Of Patron Keywords For Queer Topics To Library Of Congress Subject Headings, Jessica L. Colbert Mslis

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Subject access to homosexuality and other LGBT topics has a complicated history. Because language used for concepts can change depending on who you ask, controlling this vocabulary is a difficult task. The aim of this research is to show a discrepancy between keyword searches and Library of Congress Subject Headings when searching for queer topics, as well as to encourage other librarians to perform research in this area when updating or adding new subject headings. The results of this study show that differences in language do exist but mainly for concepts with difficult or multiple meanings or when doing searches …