Project
Homosaurus

Project Leads
The Homosaurus Editorial Board

Project URL
https://homosaurus.org/

Project Reviewer
Melissa Adler, University of Western Ontario

Project Overview

K.J. Rawson, Bri Watson, and Adrian Williams

The Homosaurus is an international linked-data-controlled vocabulary that supports improved access to and discoverability of LGBTQ+ resources within cultural heritage institutions, such as libraries, archives, and museums. The Homosaurus’ current iteration is designed to serve as a supplement to broader vocabularies such as Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). It is approved for use in MARC records using the source code HomoIT. The platform was originally a Ruby on Rails application called Opaque Namespace (developed by Oregon State University Libraries and the University of Oregon Libraries), which Homosaurus’ developer Steven Anderson rebased to a three-part backend using Solr to display records, Postgres to store data and preservation metadata, and Blazegraph for querying.

The vocabulary itself has a long history dating back to 1982, when the staff of Homodok (now IHLIA LGBT Heritage), began creating a list of Dutch-language keywords to describe resources in their bibliographic database (van der Wel 1998). Throughout the 1980s, the Homodok list was significantly expanded and merged with a similar subject list used by Anna Blaman Huis (van der Wel 1998). It was later translated into English in 1997 and renamed the “Queer Thesaurus,” and it underwent significant restructuring and expansion prior to 2013 (Greenblatt 2014; van der Wel 1998). After encountering the 2013 version, K.J. Rawson saw its unique potential for describing materials in the then-nascent Digital Transgender Archive, and the Homosaurus was converted into a linked data vocabulary in order to be used in online environments. In 2015, Rawson and van der Wel formed an editorial board that initiated an intensive revision process, resulting in a May 2019 release (version 2) that was more narrowly focused on LGBTQ+ terminology but with far greater granularity. The editorial board continues to release semi-annual versions of the Homosaurus (currently on 3.3) with new terms, changed relationships, and updated preferred terms. The total vocabulary now exceeds 2,300 terms and we are adding support for parallel versions in other languages.

The Homosaurus’ rapid and widespread uptake has demonstrated that it is a highly effective and impactful response to the impoverished landscape for LGBTQ+ information retrieval. The Homosaurus is actively used in over fifty galleries, libraries, archives, and museums in at least 11 countries (Australia, Canada, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the U.S.). While impressive, these numbers significantly undercount our users since many institutions do not publicly disclose their metadata standards, and we only learn about new users when they contact the Homosaurus directly. 

The Homosaurus is frequently recommended by informational professionals and academics, both in scholarship and cataloging resources (Astier Cholodenko, Matras, and Topini 2019; Boisitz 2022; Hardesty and Nolan 2021; Hogan and Davis 2021; Shopland 2020; Watson 2021). Dahlgren and Hansson (2020) describe the Homosaurus as a “counterpoint to hegemonic authorities such as LCSH,” that “[opposes] the erasure of critical LGBTQ+ communities and concepts.” (p. 250) Lampe (2021) further explains that the Homosaurus enables new perspectives on library and archival materials that challenge heteronormative and Eurocentric classification standards (p. 61). The Homosaurus has thus been successful in not only improving the accessibility and discovery of LGBTQ+ materials, but in exposing and undermining structural inequalities inherent in information systems.

References

Astier Cholodenko, Lorraine, Mathilde Matras, and Carolina Topini. Etude exploratoire des archives des luttes LGBTIQ à Genève (années 1970-2000) Etat des lieux et proposition de solutions. Lestime, 2019. 

Boisitz, Emma. Pronouns in Institutional Repository Metadata. Cardozo School of Law, 2022. 

Dahlgren, Anna, and Karin Hansson. "The Diversity Paradox." Digital Culture & Society 6, no. 2 (2020): 239-256.

Hardesty, Juliet L., and Allison Nolan. "Mitigating Bias in Metadata: A Use Case Using Homosaurus Linked Data." Information Technology and Libraries (Online) 40, no. 3 (2021): 1-14.

Hogan, Kristen, and Jeehyun Davis. “Hacking the Catalog as an Open Access Research Tool.” In The Scholarly Communications Cookbook, edited by Brianna Buljung and Emily Bongiovanni, 241-245. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, 2021.

Greenblatt, E. Serving LGBTIQ Library and Archives Users: Essays on Outreach, Service, Collections and Access. McFarland, 2014. https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?4bYIy5.

Lampe, Moritz. "Diskriminierende Begriffe und Wissensordnungen im Bildarchiv." Master's thesis, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2021.

Shopland, Norena. A Practical Guide to Searching LGBTQIA Historical Records. New York: Routledge, 2020.

Watson, Brian M., ed.. “Advancing Equitable Cataloging.” Proceedings from North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization, 2021.

Wel, J. van der. (1998, September 29). The Realization of the Queer Thesaurus [Paper presentation]. Refiguring the Archive Seminar Series, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?4bYIy5.

Project Review

Melissa Adler

The Homosaurus is not only an exceptionally useful linked data vocabulary, but it is a politically urgent project, as rights for LGBTQ+ people are increasingly under the threat of violence in countries around the world. Books, cultural and community resources, and health information for LGBTQ+ communities are among the materials being aggressively restricted and banned. For these reasons, access to information for LGBTQ+ people is critical. The Homosaurus can do wonders for facilitating access to information through its accurate and comprehensive terminologies. 

The vocabulary has been created by a collective of queer and trans information professionals who understand and appreciate the complexity inherent in creating and updating vocabularies that reflect queer and trans expansiveness. Homosaurus editors foreground relations of power, invite questioning and feedback, partner with user communities, and welcome diverse points of view. Although the Homosaurus has been in the making since 1997, it somehow feels like the project is in its early days. The potential for expansion is virtually endless, and while that is probably a daunting condition for the editors, the fact that this is built into its linked data vocabulary is its greatest strength. 

Terms are comprehensive and meaningfully organized into broad, narrow, and related terms. Browsing the vocabulary invites encounters with a wide array of queer and trans subjects, and reading the entries very often provides an education. Out-dated and offensive terms have scope notes that respectfully explain their role in the vocabulary. For example, the entry for Berdache includes the note: “An offensive term developed by settler anthropologists to broadly describe Indigenous people expressing mixed gender roles; only use in historical contexts.” 

The editors have carefully considered and reconsidered any of the critiques that I could put forward. For example, the limitations and problems associated with the imperialism of the English language are currently being addressed by the creation of a Spanish-language version with funding from the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as plans to continue to create vocabularies in more languages. They are keenly aware of the tensions between queer and trans experience and concepts and the affordances and limitations of controlled vocabularies. And I inquired with an editor about the absence of “2S” in the LGBTQ+ acronym on the front page of the site and received a thorough response about the project’s initiatives toward creating Indigenous terminologies. They are many and carefully considered. 

I would add that as a professor in a library and information studies program, The Homosaurus presents an excellent case study for teaching vocabulary design and application. I recommend that instructors of courses on information organization as well as courses that discuss diversity, inclusion, and decolonization in libraries, archives, and museums include Homosaurus in their teaching.

There is a wealth of documentation in the form of scholarly articles, manuals, and informational overviews that have been produced by Homosaurus editors, librarians, archivists, and other information professionals who have put the Homosaurus into practice. For anyone interested in the history of its formation or how to put the vocabulary into practice, ample resources are readily available. Adding terms to bibliographic, archival, museum, and digital library records will greatly enhance accessibility and to LGBTQ+ resources and will present information in terms that reflect identities, experiences, desires, and needs.

Suggested Resources

Rachel K. Fischer. 2023. “Using the Homosaurus in a Public Library Consortium.” Library Resources & Technical Services. 67(1). https://journals.ala.org/index.php/lrts/article/view/7985/11110.

Cifor, M., & Rawson, K. J. (2022). Mediating queer and trans pasts: The Homosaurus as queer information activism. Information, Communication & Society, 1-18. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2072753.

Jack van der Wel and Walter “Cat” Walker. 2019. “The Abridged Homosaurus: A Supplement to Existing Retrieval Systems,” Presentation at LGBTQ Archives Libraries Museums and Special Collections (ALMS) conference in Berlin. https://ihlia.nl/en/collection/homosaurus/.