Behind the Curtain: How Library of Congress Vocabulary Terms Are Created and Maintained

Abstract

Presented as part of the panel, Unveiling the Fictions, Politics, and Distortions in the Scholarly Information Ecosystem, at the 2025 annual conference of the American Folklore Society in Atlanta, Georgia.The Library of Congress (LC) maintains a set of controlled vocabulary terms that are used to describe and promote the discovery of materials through library catalogs and online databases around the world. But how are these terms added and maintained, and what determines which term is the “authorized” heading displayed to researchers and other users? Intended as an overview for non-librarians, this presentation attempts to remove the mystery surrounding these processes and discuss some of the current forces, such as critical cataloging, metadata remediation and the political climate, on LC vocabulary terms