Changing the Subject at California’s Community College Libraries

By Stephanie M. Roach, San Mateo County Community College District & Pawel Szponar, Foothill College

The California Community College (CCC) library consortium of 110 colleges using a shared Library Services Platform (LSP) has completed a “Change the Subject” project in which racist and offensive Library of Congress Subject Heading terminology related to undocumented immigrants and noncitizens has been replaced in all shared bibliographic records across the consortium. The project aims to improve the user experience for students and other library users across our state, particularly those that are described by the terminology, and are most impacted by problems such as the systemic racism that persists in library systems. The project was approved by the LSP Governance Committee in early February 2021 and technical work was completed in September 2021 by LSP Network Zone Administrator Pawel Szponar (Foothill College) with support from LSP Network Zone Task Force member Stephanie Roach (San Mateo County Community College District). Cheryl Cruse (Shasta College), who served as LSP Cataloging Work Group lead for the 2020-21 academic year, also supported throughout the process. The project was previously written about in the April 2021 CCL Outlook.