Cruising the Library: Perversities in the Organization of Knowledge

Melissa Adler's Cruising the Library: Perversities in the Organization of Knowledge examines the Library of Congress's catalog as an “archives” and analyzes cataloging practices for how “unintelligible and unviable bodies of literature are banished and hidden through policies, oversights, and indecision” (p. 152). Adler, assistant professor in the School of Information Science at the University of Kentucky, focuses on the research areas of gender and sexuality, social tagging, LIS history, and LGBTQ library and information services. Archivists will find Adler's book valuable for the light it sheds on descriptive practices used for sexualities and the history of biases within the Library of Congress (LOC) classification system.

Adler begins with an introduction that grounds the LOC and its catalog and classifications as primary historical sources. By examining the catalog and archives that preserve the work of the LOC, Adler provides insight into the historical roots of classifying sexuality. She argues that librarianship and sexuality studies developed in parallel to one another, and the LOC's early classifications show what mattered to the United States as a country at a particular moment in time. For example, in the Progressive era, a belief and excitement about science and technology resulted in widespread classification and boundary forging.

In her first chapter, “Naming Subjects: ‘Paraphilias’,” Adler traces the use of the word “paraphilias” in library descriptive practice, which replaced “sexual deviations” in the LOC catalog. She expands on this analysis in chapter 3, “Mapping Perversion.” Adler reveals that most of the books with “paraphilias” as a subject heading fall within the HQ71 section on sexual practices outside of social norms. However, many books with the paraphilias heading also fall under other subjects, including psychology, social pathology, law, language and literature, and medicine. These cataloging choices were replicated across the country through copy cataloging. Chapter 3's discussion is less directly relevant to archival work, but archivists can gain a deeper understanding of how reading rooms can be a panoptic space and the impact this can have on researchers.

One of the book's most interesting chapters is chapter 2, which focuses on the history of the Delta Collection. During and after World War II, the Library of Congress had one of the largest collections of pornographic books, motion pictures, photographs, playing cards, and other materials (p. 63). After World War II, sexual perversion was considered a threat to the United States, and the LOC played a role in regulating sexual practice by determining what materials were considered perverse and needed to be added to the Delta Collection. Adler's ability to read the Library of Congress catalog as an archival object itself allowed her to discover the Delta Collection. Adler writes, “it was in searching for materials cataloged with [paraphilias] at the Library of Congress that I discovered a number of bibliographic records that contained, instead of call numbers, a note that read, ‘Problem location’” (p. 66). Adler studied the LOC's accession records for details of the transfer of Delta materials from customs offices. This case illustrates to archivists how the documents they create to log collection details are themselves archival materials for future researchers. Adler's interpretation of the LOC catalog as an archival object also demonstrates the importance of the “library catalog as historical record” (p. 91).

Chapter 4, “Aberrations in the Catalog,” analyzes racialized queer subjects. Adler discusses the cataloging of Roderick Ferguson's Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique (2003). She cites Ferguson's text “because his account of the necessity of a queer-of-color critique directly confronts one of the core challenges I confronted in conducting this research” (p. 120): the silencing of race within cataloging practices. Chapter 4 starts with a description of a John Vachon photograph from the LOC's digital library showing four African American men outside a railroad employment office. Signs in the photo read “Colored waiting room” and “Colored men” (p. 121). Using the Library of Congress's Thesaurus for Graphic Materials, the photograph was assigned headings that include “segregation” and geographic locations. Race and ethnicity, however, are not specifically described. In the second part of the chapter, Adler analyzes the cataloging classes given to books about African American LGBTQ lives. Most books about African Americans are included in the E section of U.S. history. However, books about African American LGBTQ subjects are in the HQ section, the home for any books that focus on family, marriage, or sexuality. According to Adler, “this casting out of the public sphere may help us understand the placement of African American gays in the HQs, which effectively distances works shelved in that location from any other books on African Americans” (p. 132). During the Progressive era, bureaucracies were created in part to lessen anxiety about such issues as race. As the cataloging of items like the photograph from Ferguson's book shows, this is reflected within the ways in which the LOC organizes knowledge.

Adler's fifth and final chapter, “The Trouble with Access/Toward Reparative Taxonomies,” discusses how “in the library the authorization of subjects signals recognition and indicates what counts as knowledge” (p. 153). For example, Library of Congress Subject Headings include “Lesbian students” and “African American students,” but there are no headings for “African American heterosexuals” or “White lesbians.” Adler's chief concern is that topics connected to race and sexuality will only “be added to the margins” (p. 153). But many archivists and librarians are creating new indexing systems, building terminologies, and thinking critically about classifications. Although not mentioned in Adler's book, an example of this can be seen in the winter 2016–2017 issue of Progressive Librarian. Sarah Kortemeier's “I'll Drown My Book: Visibility, Gender, and Classification in the University of Arizona Poetry Center Library” discusses how cataloging a new anthology of conceptual writing by women inspired Kortemeier to enhance subject analysis in cataloging and create a shelf-marking system for anthologies of women's writing.¹ This is the kind of work Adler's volume can inspire.

In “The Trouble with Access,” Adler also makes a case for public and academic libraries over commercial websites and search engines. The information found on Google is based on the “commodification of users, information, and knowledge” (p. 145). Privacy is essential to public and academic libraries. Librarians focus on “the values of intellectual freedom, the freedom to read, and social justice” (p. 145), and these values are essential to sexuality and personal identity, as well as to the retrieval of information.

Throughout the book, Adler uses images of LOC photographs to reinforce her arguments. One photograph shows the reading room rotunda in the Library of Congress. This photograph demonstrates Jeremy Bentham's “Panopticon,” as well as the LOC's role in the federal government, a position that she believes is overshadowed by the access the library gives to cultural materials. Adler also uses a Delta Collection catalog card from the Papers of the Keeper of the Collections. Readers can see the LOC classifications used for an item in this collection. By seeing the card and its handwritten notations, readers become aware of the people and decisions that shaped the history of classification. An awareness of this process also shows its flaws and the possibilities for errors in judgment.

Throughout Cruising the Library, Adler demonstrates the ways in which the LOC and the body of practices used to catalog items can be read as an archives. Looking more closely at the history of these cataloging practices creates a possibility for change; if the process is understood and its history and development are articulated, changes can be made to descriptive practices moving forward. At the end of her analysis, Adler includes suggestions useful to archivists and librarians who wish to improve methods for describing sexualities. Archivists need to emphasize the importance of self-identification and get participation from communities engaged with these issues to create new index systems and revise classifications.