Lexi Frost (Iniva, Stuart Hall Library) Outreach: what’s it all about?

This paper will investigate the practical problems faced by the Stuart Hall Library from a postcolonial perspective: how can we use Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) to suggest ‘aboutness’, when the language is often inappropriate for purpose?

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The Stuart Hall Library is a special collections library focusing on the work of artists from Africa, Asia and the Americas as well as black and Asian artists working in the UK. It is open to the public, but also supports the curators of its parent institution Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts). Iniva and the Stuart Hall Library were established in the mid-1990s with the explicit mission of bringing artists from diverse backgrounds into mainstream visual arts.

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Old-fashioned politically incorrect subject headings can create tensions for all libraries, but the problem is particularly pertinent for staff and users of libraries specialising in material that challenges and redresses the status quo. LCSH have been accused of representing a nineteenth-century world-view, and have been resistant to change according to the political and social climate.

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Once created, subject headings can become difficult to question and disentangle. When works by ‘non-Western’ or minority authors are assigned subject headings by an external, predominantly ‘Western’ authority, issues of identity, representation and self-determination are called into question. When applied casually they can reinforce dangerous stereotypes. Knowledge Organisation has historically marginalised many communities, and prioritised European and Anglo-American interests. How can libraries classify without repeating colonial tropes?

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The Stuart Hall Library is investigating the creation of local subject headings to circumnavigate some of these issues. This paper will focus on the uncomfortable moments where race, difference and diversity cannot fit easily alongside the practicalities of librarianship, and ways in which this can be tackled, as well as the reasons why it is important.

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Lexi Frost is the Senior Library Assistant at the Stuart Hall Library. She is particularly interested in the critical use of libraries as activist spaces animating discussion and fueling creativity. She studied for an MA in the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the Sainsbury Research Unit in Norwich. Her dissertation focused on the politics of race in contemporary visual arts. She is currently studying for an MA in Library and Information Studies at UCL.