Fan Cataloging Practices: From Fan Fiction Database to Library Catalog

Fan Cataloging Practices: From Fan Fiction Database to Library Catalog

Presentation at the 2024 CALA Midwest Annual Conference

Taylor, Meli

Chinese American Librarians Association

2024-05-24

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

application/pdf

eng

Presentation

Since the early 21st century, catalogers and metadata librarians have considered various alternatives to MARC 21 Format for Bibliographic Metadata as access to digital resources and the interconnected nature of information in Web 2.0 have revolutionized our catalogs. While many consider a move to the semantic web through BIBFRAME or a related set of interoperable standards, others have turned to metadata schema and controlled vocabularies from outside of the library profession to consider methods of describing and organizing resources that center user experience and communal knowledge. Fan taxonomies – controlled vocabularies and metadata schema developed by fan communities on fanfiction sites, video game databases, and related web platforms – are one such area of interest for information professionals considering how communities create collaborative standards for organizing resources. These taxonomies provide a rich ground for information professionals to adapt into our own cataloging practices, especially for mediums like video games for which MARC 21 standards have proven wholly unsuitable. In this presentation, I will analyze how fans construct metadata schema that emphasize discoverability of resources and reflect community-based search strategies, using the examples of Archive of Our Own (AO3) and the Visual Novel Database (VNDB). I will then consider what information professionals can learn from these fan-based databases as we propose new cataloging standards and metadata schema that respond to an evolving digital landscape and the information-seeking behavior of our patrons. From fan communities, we can learn how to adapt the search strategies and vocabulary terms that our patrons already use into our own catalogs and turn cataloging into a collaborative process that engages directly with the communities we serve.