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Chris Bourg, the new director of the MIT libraries spoke at the annual Boston Library Consortium meeting about "de-centering" the white, male bias in library collections.  Having access to gender and race information in authority records could be useful if one is trying to locate works by under-represented populations.
Christina

Christina Bellinger
Metadata/Cataloging Librarian
University of New Hampshire Library
18 Library Way
Durham, NH 03824
603 862-0073
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From: Program for Cooperative Cataloging [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Michael Colby
Sent: Friday, June 05, 2015 2:51 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PCCLIST] Inevitable Caitlyn Jenner NAR question


While several have expressed that recording gender in an authority record may not be a good idea, we also need to be aware that there are researchers who are very interested in knowing the gender of the creator of works. In the past few years I have been cataloging hundreds of scores, donated by a faculty member who specifically collected these works because they were composed by female songwriters.



In our bibliographic records, there is no good way to identify creators by gender. I have been diligently adding the 675 field to authority records to enable this kind of searching in the anticipated linked data library world.  I utilize several reference works in this endeavor that are specifically concerned with women composers, songwriters, and musicians.



Perhaps the desires of these researchers might be something to keep in mind.



Regards,


Michael Colby
Principal Cataloger
University of California, Davis
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