Advancing IDEAs: Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, 4 March 2025

The following post is one in a regular series on issues of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility, compiled by a team of OCLC contributors.

DEI-related presentations from Core Interest Group Week

This week is Core Interest Group Week 2025, provided by the Core division of the American Library Association (ALA). The event takes place annually the first full week in March and features 30 different programs that are free for anyone to attend. The following hour-long sessions have a DEI focus. (Listings are in Central Standard Time).

• 4 March at 12:00 pm: The Cataloging and Classification Research Interest Group will offer two DEI-related presentations. “The Ethics Evolution: Catalogers’ Perspectives Over Time” from Karen Snow of Dominican University in Illinois (OCLC Symbol: IBE) and Elizabeth Shoemaker of University of Toronto (OCLC Symbol: V4U) will discuss ethical issues in cataloging. The second presentation, “Exploring Systemic Gender Bias in Library of Congress Subject Headings: A Comprehensive Study,” features analysis of LCSH terms from Sungmin Park of Rutgers University (OCLC Symbol: NJR) and Yuji Tosaka at The College of New Jersey (OCLC Symbol: NJT)  Register for the Catalog and Classification Research Interest Group program.
• 4 March at 2:00 pm: The Faceted Subject Access Interest Group offers a program with three presentations, including “Faceted Subject Vocabularies Increase Representation of Marginalized Communities in Biomedical Research” from Mego Franks, Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist. This presentation compares MeSH and Homosaurus terms relevant to LGBTQ+ identities and the importance of representation in biomedical research. Register for the Faceted Subject Access Interest Group sessions.
• 6 March at 1:00 pm: “Cataloging for Accessibility: An Inclusive Approach to Yiddish-language Collection Description” is the second presentation offered by the Cataloging Norms Interest Group. Michelle Sigiel, Yiddish Book Center (OCLC Symbol: MAYHB), will discuss cataloging Yiddish audiobooks and braille-format books. Register for the Cataloging Norms Interest Group program.

Every year Core Interest Group Week provides lots of great webinars that I may not be able to attend live. Fortunately, all the programs are recorded. According to the website, recordings will be posted the second week in March so you can access all the recordings from the Interest Group webpage. Contributed by Kate James.

Axe-con 2025

Axe-con is a free online accessibility conference, offered annually by Deque Systems as a live event with fully captioned and transcribed recordings, and with ASL interpretation. Attendance of axe-con sessions can also be used towards continuing education (CE) credit for the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP) certification. Talks at axe-con 2025 (which took place between 25-27 February) included sessions for designers, developers, testers, accessibility specialists, managers, and compliance officers. OCLC staff across multiple departments attended and particularly appreciated the talks about the European Accessibility Act, testing, training, and advocating for accessibility improvements.

This conference is always engaging but the topic of accessibility is particularly resonant right now, with regulatory changes imminent in both Europe and the United States. The agenda was so packed with interesting talks that we set up a Teams channel dedicated to sharing notes, quotes, and takeaways from various sessions. The accessibility community is small but passionate, and as U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth noted, “You might think ‘oh, that’s too micro.’ It’s not too micro. Drive change at all levels, and together we’ll make the big change happen.” Register for axe-con to receive a link to the recorded sessions. Contributed by Liz Neal.

“Neo-censorship” of digital content

Challenges to and bans on physical books get a good deal of attention in this space (for instance, see “The facts about book bans” in the 4 February 2025 “Advancing IDEAs”), but less visible forms of censorship are also rampant in this era. Library Futures, a nonprofit advocacy and research project of The Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy at the New York University School of Law (OCLC Symbol: YLS), has just released “Neo-Censorship in U.S. Libraries: An Investigation into Digital Content Suppression.” The report borrows from journalist Rohan Jayasekera’s landmark 2008 definition of “neo-censorship” as “a kind of control on opinion that moves beyond the traditional model—that of the state, the law and the secret policeman. Today’s censors can be found in big business, courtrooms, schools, newsrooms. They block ideas out of habit, or prejudice or fear and often in secret.” Using the rationale of keeping “pornographic” materials from children and/or protecting the rights of parents, pressure has been applied by courts, legislatures, and other institutions to implement certain search stopwords, filters, and other means that seriously limit access to legitimate research and informational content on such issues as current events, history, health, and science.

The removal of a tangible book from a library shelf is just one obvious means of censorship. But imposing certain types of search restrictions on digital collections and databases makes it difficult or impossible for children as well as adults to access resources on such topics as breast cancer research, recognizing and reporting abuse, various forms of violence, genocide, racism, hate, and other subjects subsumed under filters and stopwords. Library Futures looked deeply into policies, legislation, and court cases; interviewed librarians and leaders of consortia; and reviewed research on information seeking behavior in libraries to understand the impact on libraries and their patrons. The report presents evidence to debunk common misconceptions about the use of databases and reveals that students and other library users have become increasingly aware of the power they have to fight such neo-censorship. Contributed by Jay Weitz.