Ghosts in the Controlled Vocabulary: Library of Congress Subject Headings and Historical Analysis

The critical cataloging strategy of performing historical analysis of subject headings traces the contours of power in libraries. Though discourse shifts, some harmful identifiers stubbornly haunt controlled vocabularies like ghosts, leaving residual traces of outmoded power structures. This paper explores the possibility of ghost hunting in the Library of Congress Subject Headings; what stubborn traces of inequity remain in the catalog, and how these ghosts are central to ethical considerations in cataloging? Curiosity about cataloging ghosts is a step towards creating reparative taxonomies, using the language of the Library of Congress Subject Headings to name specific harms and work towards targeted redress.