Sanford Berman, known throughout the technical services community as one of the primary nemeses of LC's Cataloging Policy Office, addressed a Cataloging Forum in the Mumford Room on Nov. 24.
Mr. Berman, the head cataloger of Hennepin County Library (HCL) in Minnesota since 1973, was briefly introduced by Sarah Thomas, LC's director for cataloging, to a capacity pre-Thanksgiving holiday crowd. Casually attired in a black turtleneck, Mr. Berman in measured tones called to task what he perceives as LC's faults in the development and assignment of subject headings, as well as its descriptive cataloging methods. His main concern was "bibliocide by cataloging" -- the rendering of works both physically and intellectually inaccessible through LC's allocating to books of what he refers to as misleading and biased subject headings. This problem, he added, is compounded by smaller libraries, in an effort to save money, slavishly using the headings that LC provides.
HCL is a notable exception to this practice. It uses LC records as points of departure, particularly useful in the training of new catalogers. It also uses Dewey Decimal, rather than the LC classification numbers preferred by most research libraries.
Mr. Berman laid out the main problems of LC cataloging as the use of obsolete or inaccurate terms; the failure to create enough new headings; the allotting of too few headings; and the use of terms that assume America's ruling cultural groups to be the norm.
He judiciously used examples throughout his talk to illustrate his points. LC employs foreign language and technical subject headings whose meanings sometimes elude even the average educated reader, such as the Spanish language equivalent for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, he said. HCL, has, but LC has not, constructed as subject headings commonly used terms such as family planning, yuppies, hate groups and household hints. Mr. Berman contended that LC's average of two subject headings per monographic work is far too few, especially when it inaccurately or prejudicially uses terms such as Eskimos for Inuit, Falashas for Ethiopian Jews, and Gypsies for Romanies. Mr. Berman decried "Christocentric" religious headings that he said presume Christianity to be the norm, and sexually prejudiced headings, which assume man to be the focus, as in prehistoric man and manpower.
Citing LC's insufficient number of cross references, Mr. Berman appealed for a departure from elitist sensitivities by adding x- references as well from frequently misspelled variations of subject headings. He further asserted a need for more subdivisions, such as lobbying and subliminal methods. This last is especially important for self-instructive audiotapes, of which HCL has a large collection.
In order to make new headings easier to set up, LC should streamline its bureaucratic procedures, not add to them, he said. Mr. Berman charged that there is a lack of quality control in the Cataloging in Publication program. The fact that catalogers apparently do not look at all of the preliminary materials may be the only explanation for many inaccuracies. Mr. Berman later relented that it is difficult to catalog from only the few pages that publishers can provide before publication and that catalogers analyze as best they can. Corrections to CIPs come too late for other libraries relying on LC's cataloging to make similar changes. Finally, Mr. Berman dared LC to catalog all items equitably, or not at all. Relegating materials in particular subject areas or in little-used languages to minimal- level cataloging is often consigning them to oblivion, he said.
Mr. Berman called on LC's descriptive catalogers physically to describe books with punctuation and symbols more comprehensible to nonscholarly readers. Among the symbols that LC itself should challenge are c for copyright, ca for about, and v for volume. There should be more content notes. At present, only about 4 percent of adult nonfiction receives them. There should also be more title-added entries than LC currently assigns, he urged.
The task is to implement all this without in effect indexing a book, while still reducing arrearages (unprocessed materials). Mr. Berman asserted that his experience at HCL convinced him that, once a cataloger begins the intellectual process of analyzing a record, it requires little more effort to assign multiple subject headings or additional descriptive elements. HCL does not have an excessive backlog of uncataloged materials. Fewer procedural rules to follow in the future at LC might unshackle catalogers' creativity and allow them the time to bring more materials to more users, he said.
