Reflecting on Change the Subject with Jill Baron

by Jacquelyn Whiting, March 2022

Jacquelyn Whiting: Welcome, Jill. I share with people how I identify for transparency in our conversations and also because I think it helps people to help me make sure the conversation is as inclusive as it can be. I identify as a cisgender female. I'm heterosexual. I have a life partner. I'm an author. I'm an educator. I'm a coach. I'm a librarian. I'm a tech integrator.

Jill Baron: My MFA thesis advisor, Brenda Wineapple once described me as a lambent flame—imagine candlelight—and I think it's a beautiful characterization of who I am. I like to think that I bring light and warmth to my work as a filmmaker, a librarian, and teacher. And to my parenting, friendships, and community work.

Jacquelyn: I love that. Some people have a way with language and they find the perfect word, right?

In my work as an educator and as a librarian, I never really talked to students about the origin of those subject headings. I just said, use these as a tool to further refine your searching, but I never went through an actual examination of them. I was really struck in the documentary when you called them "controlled vocabulary that we draw upon," and how important it is to have common language so that we all understand its meaning and we can communicate more clearly. And yet everything that happened in that documentary was a result of that controlled vocabulary. So I thought this would be a good time to explore how pervasive that kind of practice is in that language, and what you learned about gatekeepers and how words and their authority are monitored.

Jill: I realized when I had that interaction with Melissa [Padilla, a Dartmouth student whose question is at the center of the film and who co-produced it] that my explanation in the moment didn't do any good; that despite the fact that there is a controlled vocabulary that the Library of Congress establishes and draws from, that didn't make her feel any better about the fact that we were using a racial slur.

So there was a real disconnect in that moment for me, where I, as a librarian, understood what was operating. I knew that it wasn't necessarily Dartmouth using these words. It wasn't me using these words, but to a user who doesn't understand library infrastructure, these are words that we were all using that we had somehow all signed off on by having there.

To answer your question about what I've learned about the gatekeepers and how this authority is maintained: I have learned more in the past years about how the Library of Congress subject headings are maintained—for example, how that process works at the Library of Congress itself, how the community participates and provides input on subject heading additions and revisions.

But, at the same time, even though my own understanding of how this controlled vocabulary has evoloved, I still don't think I would necessarily give a different answer if a student put me on the spot because, how can you convey that sort of professional knowledge quickly, and especially in a fraught moment? It was really a tense moment between me and Melissa where she felt harmed by those words, and so no amount of explaining why they were there would address that harm or make her feel better.

Jacquelyn: Yeah, and I want to take the opportunity to say kudos to both of you for how you navigated that moment: her willingness to give voice to her pain and her injury; and, your really quick ability to reflect on the interaction you'd had and that, as you said, your response to her wasn't effective. It was honest, but it didn't meet her need at the time, and then it gave rise to this incredible growth journey that is explored through the documentary.

The words she used when she described encountering the term "illegal alien" in the database search were "disgust" and "perplexed," and that's two really potent reactions, right? One, I think, invites someone to pull away, and the other invites inquiry and curiosity as to why this is here. And so I'm wondering, as a white woman myself working on my own cultural humility, can you describe the evolution of your reaction to Melissa? How did it go from that fraught moment to an allyship? A partnership? A filmmaking collaboration?

Jill: Those are really great observations about those words—those two words—the recoil, but also the curiosity, and I think that's what enabled us to work together and to build trust in order to be able to even make a film together.

When somebody airs a grievance, it's never easy, you may feel immediately hurt or defensive—these are natural reactions in the face of conflict. But at the same time, I'll say, in the moment, I knew Melissa was correct: that it was wrong. I knew that they were inappropriate. The fact that I didn't catch their inappropriateness before she pointed it out is the thing that I reckoned with afterwards the most, I think.

Looking back, I think one of the things that is so amazing to me about this whole situation is, one, that she had the confidence to air that grievance in the moment, and that she also felt the conviction that this needed to be addressed and she brought it to other people. It's a vulnerable thing to share a grievance with others and to hope that they see things the same way you do and to work with you. She really organized her peers into saying, "Yeah, this isn't right. We need to do something about this."

It was that organizing skill and conviction that really struck me when, weeks later, the students publicly protested the use of this term in the catalog. That caused a shift for me between experiencing an internal process of reckoning with my perhaps lacking cultural or social or political awareness, and then actually doing something about it and taking corrective action. That was a turning point.

Following their protest, we all arranged to meet, and during this meeting, they insisted, "What are we going to do about this?" We realized that no one else was going to solve this problem.

At the time, as a librarian, I felt very distant from the inner workings of cataloging and technical services. I work with the public. I help them find sources; I teach. I assumed that the way that information is organized and cataloged is not of my concern, and—I was still a pretty new librarian at that point—I thought, that's work other people do. But I think in that moment, when the students were asking me, what are we going to do, I realized nobody else was going to take this on, and that it was my responsibility to address their complaint, take it seriously, and look for solutions.

I'd say the evolution is: the internal work and then the external action, the response. The film, I think, was almost a way to reflect and share out on those experiences, because I knew that as a white woman, my reaction and my role, my initial role in the situation, could not possibly be unique.

Jacquelyn: That's really interesting; I appreciate that because, as I said, I never thought to consider these headings when I was working with students. I did question the search terms that they would use, but I didn't question the headings that organized the information they were trying to access with their own search terms.

Jill: I was aware that the Library of Congress had a long problematic history with its subject headings; I had learned about this in library school. I was tapped in enough to ideas from Sanford Berman and others about the white, Eurocentric, patriarchal manner of the subject headings, but I still didn't think it was my responsibility to do anything about them. I genuinely felt a kind of disconnect.

I felt that it was enough that I critiqued them in my head, or knew them to be problematic, that that was enough. What I realized in my encounter with Melissa and the other students was that it's not enough to feel that you are a progressive person or to feel that you've got the right principles; you actually have to act on them and make them visible and put yourself out there and be vulnerable. So that was really the learning experience for me.

Jacquelyn: In doing all of that, did you anticipate the maelstrom that was going to result from the work that you were doing? You were doing important work for important reasons, with and alongside the people who were being harmed by the subject heading, and yet, what it turned into was a national debate, a congressional debate. Were you prepared for that and how do you feel about it now?

Jill: I think it would be naive of me to say, no, I never expected it. What I didn't expect was for it to be at the scale that it was. When I first started working with the students, I brought others in to make sure that our library was on board with this petition to the Library of Congress. And, of course, we could not have made the petition to the Library of Congress without the approval of not only my colleague in cataloging, John DeSantis, who did much of the work of that petition, but also the approval of the administration.

I knew that the issue was potentially controversial enough to feel the need to bring in colleagues and build a collective response, but I never imagined the national media response to it or the fact that it would be debated in Congress. And that's really why I felt the need to make the movie. This had always been such an important story for me personally, and I know for the students it was an important story for them, too. But to see that it was clearly striking a chord with others, and that it was getting national attention, I knew that there were much wider and deeper implications of the story.

Jacquelyn: So does that lead you to any advice or counsel that you can offer other librarians around the country today, who are finding themselves embroiled in, maybe not the same controversy that you all were a part of through the change of the subject process, but other issues, like book challenges, that are really contentious and heated in various states, communities, school districts, or places of higher learning around the country? Do you have any words of wisdom for other people who are finding themselves in a similar position?

Jill: You know, I wish I did. This is a really very challenging moment, especially in our country, for libraries, and so this is a difficult question to answer, because I don't have any pat words of wisdom. But it is really scary to stand up for what you think is right, especially if there is pushback, whether that pushback is immediate or farther away. I think that really the only way through it is with others and through building community.

For anybody who is engaged in some kind of fight, don't even try to do it alone. Find the people that are willing to stand with you, and take on the challenges that you can, and know that you can't, maybe, solve the problems, but you can pick away at it, if you have good folks doing it with you. The emphasis is on community and the collective effort, because it just can't get done otherwise.

Jacquelyn: Thank you for that. I wanted to close by asking, what are the updates since the film? You made reference to other things that you continue to do. What other things have happened since the ending of the film and where you are today in this work?

Jill: We finished the film in March or April of 2019 and started screening it almost immediately. We got an incredibly supportive and gratifying response to it from the beginning. I think we made the film with the intended audience of people that don't know anything about libraries. That's why we really tried to explain what is a subject heading, what do librarians do.

But, surprisingly, we gained a following with library workers. The library profession really became our main audience, and I think there was something powerful about seeing a story about you on screen, and that was exciting. But what was even more thrilling about having the film out there is seeing what audience members did with it.

When we chose the name, "Change the Subject," we were really addressing the Library of Congress. What we didn't anticipate was that library workers across the country and the world would take steps, concrete steps, to changing the subject heading locally.

And so what we saw was the growth of a grassroots movement to change the subject heading at the local level in the face of impasse at the national, Library of Congress level. So that was really exciting. And this wasn't just because of the film, but I think that the film crystallized some ideas and efforts that were already happening in the community and made it very palpable for people to see, "Oh, well, what can I do? How can I get involved? Oh, here's something I can actually concretely do!"

At this point we have lost count of how many libraries have changed the subject heading locally. I think it's a fascinating outcome of the film, because, you know, libraries have traditionally been all about interoperability and sharing standards and making efficiencies. And changing the subject heading at the local level in many ways defies those logics, so that's the thing that I'm just amazed by and inspired by—the willingness to do that at scale.

What did happen is that on November 12th of 2021, the Library of Congress finally did issue a statement and they're changing the subject heading officially now. They're changing "Aliens" to "Noncitizens" and "Illegal aliens" to either "Noncitizens" or "Illegal immigration," which is a change from what they had said they were going to do in 2016. They were going to bifurcate the heading, but it was going to be "Noncitizens" or "Unauthorized immigration."

Some of the immediate response was, yay, they finally did something! But for those of us closely involved with the issue, it was deeply frustrating. Some folks said, "Well, incremental change is better than none," but we felt that we demonstrated in pretty clear ways in the film that the I-word is really at the root of the problem and the harm.

I don't think the conversation is over yet, so it remains to be seen: are libraries going to hold onto their local changes? Are they going to go with the Library of Congress's new headings?

Jacquelyn: Well, I hope that our conversation empowers more librarians to have the agency to do the work locally that needs to be done while we wait for the slower systems to catch up to the good work that you started.

Jill: I think that's exactly right. And a friend reminded me of that recently. When you're feeling overwhelmed or frustrated by the slow pace of change, try to address what is within your local reach. Maybe that's just within your department at your library. Maybe that's just within some committee you're on, but what can you do on a very local level to bring about positive change? And, hopefully, that kind of work ripples out.

Change is very incremental. It's very slow. We started this process in 2014; we're in 2022 and we're having this conversation, which blows my mind, but it just goes to show that things take time and we learn and gain wisdom as we go, and so to hang in there.

Jacquelyn: Well, thank you so much. This conversation has been an absolute pleasure. I'm so glad we got to meet virtually face-to-face. And I wish you continued luck in doing this work and I will do my part to spread the word.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.