Health Sciences and Medical Librarianship Commons^™

Racial And Ethnic Categories: Impact On Medical Subject Headings, Jamia Williams, Aidy Weeks

Library Faculty Presentations

This presentation was part of the OMB Public Listening Sessions on Federal Race and Ethnicity Standards Revision. The presentation addressed the use of racial and ethnic categories and their impact on medical subject headings managed by the National Library of Medicine.

The presentation was on behalf of the Medical Library Association (MLA) comprising more than 400 institutions and 2,500 professional health sciences and medical librarians and a joint collaboration between the Latinx Caucus and the Social Justice and Health Disparities Caucus. Both Weeks and Williams shared information regarding how these medical subject headings impact indexing and searching of biomedical …

Letter To Nlm About Mesh, Violet Fox, Katie Lobner, Kelleen Maluski, Christian Minter, Chelsea Misquith, Stephanie Roth, Aidy Weeks, Jamia Williams

Library Faculty Publications

A letter written to the National Library of Medicine addressing concerns regarding the problematic medical subject heading, "Blacks", other problematic terms, and the process by which they are selected. The letter concludes with recommendations for improvement by the authors and endorsed by several hundred signatories. In total, the letter was signed by 726 library workers from around the world and sent by email to National Library of Medicine representatives on Friday, June 10th, 2022. In addition, it was also shared with the Medical Library Association which distributed it through their website under the op-ed, "Open Letter to NLM Regarding MeSH …