Abstract

The interpretation of RDA Rule 9.7 regarding gender when identifying persons by Library of Congress (LC) and the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) reinforce regressive conceptions of gender identity. The rule instructs catalogers to record gender when identifying persons, and although RDA gives catalogers the flexibility to record more than two gender labels, LC limits Name Authority Cooperative Program (NACO) catalogers to a binary label: male, female or not known. In this article, the authors challenge gender as a descriptive attribute for personal names, critique how LC is instructing NACO catalogers to record elements about gender, and make recommendations to address describing persons in LC authority records.

Notes

Received October 2013; revised January 2014; accepted January 2014.

Address correspondence to Emily Drabinski, Long Island University, Brooklyn, 1 University Plaza, Brooklyn, NY 11201, USA. E-mail: emily.drabinski@liu.edu.

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an Article published in Cataloging and Classification Quarterly, April 24, 2014, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/01639374.2014.882465

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-24-2014


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