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Adelphi University

Library of Congress Classification and Subject Headings

Library of Congress Classification and Subject Headings

At the Adelphi University Libraries, materials are assigned Library of Congress Subject Headings based on their content. When you view a OneSearch record, these subject headings will display as active links pointing to other materials with the same subject headings.  

Materials at the Adelphi University Libraries (except for electronic resources) are given Call Numbers, based on the Library of Congress Classification System. Library of Congress Classification Systems organizes materials by Subject. The below list shows how Transgender materials are organized.  This list is by no means exhaustive. This is useful in browsing, whether by looking at the physical stacks themselves, or bibliographic records in OneSearch. 

But Beware!  See the Decolonizing the Catalog Tab!

For Gender Identity 

HQ12-472 Sexual life. Erotica

HQ18-HQ30.7 Sexual Behavior and Attitudes. Sexuality

HQ31-64 Sex instruction and sexual ethics

For Sexual Deviations 

HQ71-72 Sexual deviations

HQ74-74.2 Bisexuality

HQ75-76.8 Homosexuality. Lesbianism

For Transgender & Non-Binary

HQ77-77.95 Transvestism, Transexualism

HQ79 Sadism. Masochism. Fetishism

Why do we need to decolonize catalogs? One might be genuinely baffled that in the course of the 21st century some of the expressions used for writing still articulate a painful paradox of abnegation and defiance about minority groups, for example between what is appropriate and what is not acceptable in terms of phrasal usage. If you described a homosexual person as Queer in 1980 it may have a different connotation in today’s environment. As new emerging cultures and movements (activist) develop in our civility we need to move forward with new expressions of communication including knowledge in the broader academic fields (standards). Libraries remain the hub of information and decolonizing subject headings such as Transgender makes all the sense. As Eric A. Stanley proposes in the following excerpt (TSQ Vol1, issue 3 Aug 2014)

“In prison abolitionist organizing, which has constituted the majority of my more legible political work for the last decade, we often use the term “most directly impacted” in an attempt to get at these same sets of questions. The problem is, of course, that identity is always relational and that under the sensibilities of neoliberal inclusion, at best we often end up with representational change and abandon our demand for structural transformation. I think, or I would at least like to hope, that we might be able to have both, as they necessarily prefigure one another” 

Thus keeping existing terminologies and new ones may be useful as far as the term is representative of the demographic, ethnographic, or person in question. Because it may be still offensive for some segments they need to be revised. In some cases simple daily interactions could prove to be apprehended and the whole complex of Transgender persons misguided by their own community will remain, perhaps, as long as we can understand the susceptibility of people in this category most undergo when they are amiss characterized.