8: Cataloging fact #2: Mohammedanism

In 1988, I went into my local public library (in a progressive, university town), looking for information on Islam. I was very proud of my facility with the card catalog and I went straight for the “I’s.” Nothing. I went to a librarian who cheerfully led me back to the wall of cataloging drawers and guided me to “Mohammedanism.” Cataloging class was my chance to understand why that happened.

I didn’t know much about Islam at that moment in 1988 (hence my trip to the library), although if you’re a regular reader you know that I went on to convert. I was already inclined to look favorably on Islam. I took offense that in the Seattle of the Midwest, a major world religion would be referred to by such backwards terminology.

Finally, after cataloging, I understood that there was no way for paper to keep up with the world, and it took libraries a while (for a variety of reasons) to let go of card catalogs. I understood that to change Mohammedanism to Islam would have meant re-printing and swapping out hundreds if not thousands of cards in that single library alone. It wasn’t practical. It wasn’t working. But it took libraries awhile to reach a state where they could respond to the world as it changed and grew with them.

And here’s where things get tricky. How do we adjust now to the changing world? I’m not talking about for the public. That’s another discussion. I’m talking about the approach we take with one another: the values of the profession and how they are decided and communicated among library workers – formally or informally.

At the top of the profession, the values are on display at the conferences where we gather. The profession is almost always on the cutting edge of progressive ideology. At the vanguard.

And on the ground, in libraries both rural and urban all over my home state of Michigan and across the country, values may be different. Often, libraries are run and staffed by folks who didn’t go to library school. Who didn’t sign up for a progressive life view. And maybe they aren’t devoted to all of the ALA modernizations.

Changing terminology from Muhammadanism to Islam is a matter of accuracy, but not all decisions are as cut and dried.

Perhaps a push for choosing pronouns and putting them on staff name badges is not common in their communities. And removing Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name from an award is difficult to explain after generations have loved her books and deemed them: “Safe reading.”

These folks direct and staff many of our nation’s libraries. Is it really kind, or wise, to alienate them? Or me? I’ll admit it: I’m not a progressive. And I am disinclined to swallow values that I haven’t chosen for myself.

Library workers are not all in the same place. But we all have the same public service to provide. I’m not saying that the profession needs to abandon its values.