Back in October, the Editorial Policy Committee approved my first exhibit (EPC 141-S30.2 LGBT and transgender identity) but pointed out that the resources I had consulted were too U.S.-centric and that I should investigate whether there was literary warrant for additional concepts in gender and sexuality. My research resulted in a new exhibit, EPC 141A-S30.1 Two-Spirit people and SOGI, which was recently approved by the members of EPC.
The phrase Sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) isn't as widely used in the United States as in Canada, Australia, and the U.K. As a relatively new phrase (emerging primarily within the past decade), there is still some ambiguity in the way SOGI is used. I found many resources that used SOGI essentially interchangeably with "LGBT" and its variations, to refer to sexual and gender minorities, but I found other sources that specifically contradicted that, saying that SOGI refers to everyone's orientation/identity, including heterosexual and cisgender people. For the time being, we've added SOGI (Sexual orientation and gender identity) to the class-here note at 306.76 Sexual orientation, transgender identity, intersexuality.
I also found literary warrant to add a provision for works about Two-Spirit people. The term Two-Spirit is relatively new, having been adopted as a pan-Indian term in 1990 during a gathering of American and Canadian LGBTQ people. I consulted many sources, prioritizing those representing definitions by Indigenous peoples themselves (find a selected list of resources on pages 6-7 of the exhibit). They emphasized that the adoption of the term was an attempt to distance users of the term from what they saw as colonizer conceptions of berdache, gay, lesbian, or transgender, and that the core of the identity is people's Indigenous identity. With the addition of a new class number 306.7608997 North American native peoples featuring a note to "Class here Two-Spirit people," it is clear to classifiers that they can start at that number to allow for further subdivision based on the nations provided for in Table 5. For example, a book about Two-Spirit people from the Siksiká Nation could be classed in 306.7608997352.
As with so many terms relating to gender identity or sexuality, these phrases are likely to shift meaning in the future. When that happens, we'll make revisions—the work of updating Dewey is never done!
I'll share other recent developments in this area with another blog post later this week.
Comments