If you’ve been searching UBC Library’s catalogue lately, you may notice a change that went live earlier this year. Xwi7xwa Library, working with the library’s Technology, Discovery, & User Experience (TDUX) team, has changed the First Nations House of Learning (FNHL) Subject Heading Aboriginal Canadians to Indigenous Peoples. Over 17,000 headings were changed as a result of this decision, which represents a major shift for the library and the discoverability of Indigenous materials across the library’s catalogue.
Like many libraries around the world, UBC Library uses the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) to classify collection items in all its branches, except Xwi7xwa Library, which uses FNHL subject headings. The FNHL subject headings were developed at UBC to better reflect Indigenous Peoples’ self-identities, modes of understanding, and traditional knowledge.
Subject headings help libraries organize materials through a controlled vocabulary, similar to how dictionaries and thesauri function to arrange information into a defined system. These headings also help library users search through a library’s online catalogue to discover materials based on topic, but don’t affect where a book sits on the shelf, which is instead determined by the library’s classification system and determines an item’s call number.
The project to change Aboriginal Canadians to Indigenous Peoples was spearheaded by Taya Jardine, who joined the library in September 2023 in the role of Indigenous Metadata Librarian, a new position at the library that works on both the Xwi7xwa Library and TDUX teams. As part of their role, Taya is responsible for Indigenizing metadata schemas, descriptions, classification and collection policies for Indigenous scholarship in collections at Xwi7xwa and across UBC Library as a whole.
“I have a responsibility to our Indigenous communities, within UBC and outside of UBC, whose stories and knowledges are held within UBC,” says Taya. “[I want to] make our metadata—our records—the most appropriate, respectful and accurate that they can possibly be, and that’s taking shape in projects like updating our subject headings, starting with this one.”
This new change to the term Indigenous is the result of much discussion at the library.
“I’ve been drawing on UBC scholars like Dr. Greg Younging, who recognizes the use of Indigenous within international policy, like the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007, as a turning point for the adoption of the term Indigenous. We’ve also talked about the power of language and its impact on Peoples,” explains Taya.
“Aboriginal is commonly used in relation to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit, especially within Canada, in relation to things like the Canadian Constitution and Section 35 Aboriginal Rights. But we also acknowledge that the etymology of words can be really impactful and Aboriginal can sometimes be misinterpreted with the prefix ‘ab’ which means ‘not’ and then it can come across as ‘not original.’ Whereas the roots for Indigenous are rooted in the land and has that ancestral connection to the lands that we come from as kin.”
“We’re starting with [a term] that is applied to a significant portion of our records. It’s the most top level and widely applicable to our collection, and is also one of the first things that people see when they’re looking through the catalog,” says Taya. “So we’re increasing discoverability and access to our collection as well.”
Feedback from the community has also been integral to the process, and will continue to be sought out as Taya and the library turn their focus to other Indigenous metadata issues: “We’re open to hearing from community and we’re really interested in hearing about other changes they would like to see.”
Get in touch with Taya Jardine (taya.jardine@ubc.ca) with your questions or feedback about Indigenous metadata at UBC Library.
This article was originally published by UBC Library, and was republished on August 15, 2024.