Homosaurus Unleashed: A Panel on Transforming LGBTQ+ Subject Access in Libraries

In recent years, libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions have begun work towards improving diverse subject access to their collections. A large part of this has been the integration of alternative controlled vocabularies, like the Homosaurus (https://homosaurus.org/), into MARC records in addition to standard Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH).
In this program, librarians from different academic settings (special collections, consortia) will discuss different aspects of implementing Homosaurus including establishing policies and procedures, creating and tracking bibliographic record enhancement projects, training staff, student workers and volunteers to use Homosaurus for subject analysis, collaborating with subject librarians, other public facing staff and community to increase awareness of issues surrounding subject representation of the marginalized groups in the library catalog. The presentation will also touch on adding Homosaurus headings at scale through automation or replacing problematic LSCH with Homosaurus terms through masking, as well as the ethics of applying automated approaches to collections about marginalized communities.
Though this presentation is limited to Homosaurus, the same strategies could be applied to implementing other alternative subject vocabularies.