Change the Subject

Last updated
Change the Subject
Change the Subject film poster, cropped.png
Change the Subject film poster
Directed byJill Baron, Sawyer Broadley
Produced byÓscar Rubén Cornejo Cásares, Melissa Padilla
StarringÓscar Rubén Cornejo Cásares, Melissa Padilla
Release date
  • 2019 (2019)
Running time
55 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$25,000

Change the Subject is a 2019 documentary film directed by Jill Baron and Sawyer Broadley. The film documents Dartmouth College students lobbying the Library of Congress to replace the term "Illegal aliens" with "Undocumented immigrants" in the Library of Congress Subject Headings. While ultimately unsuccessful, the efforts of the students have inspired individual libraries to replace the term.

Contents

Background

Library of Congress Subject Headings consist of controlled vocabulary terms developed and maintained by the Library of Congress (LC); the thesaurus is the most widely used subject vocabulary in the world. [1]

The subject heading "Aliens, Illegal" was established by LC in 1980 and revised to "Illegal aliens" in 1993. [2] [3] LC has changed terms in the past once they are perceived to have become outdated. For example, the term "Negroes" was changed to "Blacks" in the 1970s, which was later split off to provide a new term for "Afro-Americans" in the 1990s, which was then changed to "African Americans" in 2000. [2] By 2014, many news organizations in the US, including the Associated Press, USA Today , American Broadcasting Company, Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times , had already ceased using the term "illegal" to refer to migrants lacking visa documentation. [3]

Film content

The term illegal alien is particularly problematic because of several reasons; the first in the way it is weaponized, and utilized in society. It is meant to be derogatory and dehumanize.

Oscar Cornejo Casares [4]

The film centers around Óscar Rubén Cornejo Cásares and Melissa Padilla, who noticed the term "Illegal aliens" appearing in the library catalog at Dartmouth College while they were completing their undergraduate degrees. After being told Dartmouth used the standardized terminology maintained by LC, and that the term could not be changed locally, Cásares, Padilla and other students petitioned LC directly in 2014 to change the term to "Undocumented immigrants". Their petition was rejected. [4] The students and other librarians then successfully petitioned the American Library Association (ALA) to endorse the revision. [3]

Following the endorsement from the ALA and other organizations, Dartmouth students petitioned LC a second time in 2016. LC accepted and agreed to change the term, but faced a backlash from several Republican members of Congress. Representative Diane Black initiated legislation [5] to block the change in April 2016, on the grounds it was "political correctness" and disrespectful to change a term which she incorrectly claimed had been used by LC since the "early 1900s". [6] It was the first time Congress had attempted to halt LC changing a catalog term. [7] Following the Republican backlash, LC did not change the term in their system. Library of Congress administrators declined to be interviewed for the documentary. [8]

Aftermath

Despite the efforts of the students being unsuccessful, many libraries inspired by the Dartmouth students have replaced the term "Illegal aliens" in their own local catalog systems, and have continued to pressure LC to change the term. [2] [3] Institutions that have voluntarily changed the term include the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Colorado Boulder, [9] California State University, [7] and Yale University. [2] On November 15, 2021, the Library of Congress announced the decision to replace the terms "Aliens" with "Noncitizens," along with replacing the heading "Illegal aliens" with the headings "Noncitizens" and "Illegal immigration." [10]

The film has been screened at many universities, often accompanied by activists featured in the film for panel discussions, [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] and was an official selection at the 2019 Maine International Film Festival and the 2019 Boston Latino International Film Festival. [16] [17]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dartmouth College</span> Private university in New Hampshire, US

Dartmouth College is a private Ivy League research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, Dartmouth is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Emerging into national prominence at the turn of the 20th century, Dartmouth has since been considered among the most prestigious undergraduate colleges in the United States.

Sanford Berman is a librarian. He is known for radicalism, promoting alternative viewpoints in librarianship, and acting as a proactive information conduit to other librarians around the world. His vehicles of influence include public speaking, voluminous correspondence, and unsolicited "care packages" delivered via the U.S. Postal Service. Will Manley, columnist for the American Library Association (ALA) publication, American Libraries, has praised Berman: "He makes you proud to be a librarian."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986</span> Major Attempt to alter US Immigration System

The Immigration Reform and Control Act was passed by the 99th United States Congress and signed into law by U.S. President Ronald Reagan on November 6, 1986.

In information science, authority control is a process that organizes information, for example in library catalogs, by using a single, distinct spelling of a name (heading) or an identifier for each topic or concept. The word authority in authority control derives from the idea that the names of people, places, things, and concepts are authorized, i.e., they are established in one particular form. These one-of-a-kind headings or identifiers are applied consistently throughout catalogs which make use of the respective authority file, and are applied for other methods of organizing data such as linkages and cross references. Each controlled entry is described in an authority record in terms of its scope and usage, and this organization helps the library staff maintain the catalog and make it user-friendly for researchers.

The Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN) is a serially based system of numbering cataloged records in the Library of Congress, in the United States. It is not related to the contents of any book, and should not be confused with Library of Congress Classification (LCC).

In law, an alien is any person who is not a citizen or a national of a specific country, although definitions and terminology differ to some degree depending upon the continent or region. More generally, however, the term "alien" is perceived as synonymous with foreign national.

The Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) comprise a thesaurus of subject headings, maintained by the United States Library of Congress, for use in bibliographic records. LC Subject Headings are an integral part of bibliographic control, which is the function by which libraries collect, organize, and disseminate documents. It was first published in 1898, a year after the publication of Library of Congress Classification (1897). The last print edition was published in 2016. Access to the continuously revised vocabulary is now available via subscription and free services.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DREAM Act</span> American legislative proposal on immigration

The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, known as the DREAM Act, is a United States legislative proposal to grant temporary conditional residency, with the right to work, to undocumented immigrants who entered the United States as minors—and, if they later satisfy further qualifications, they would attain permanent residency.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cataloging (library science)</span> Process of creating meta-data for information resources to include in a catalog database

In library and information science, cataloging (US) or cataloguing (UK) is the process of creating metadata representing information resources, such as books, sound recordings, moving images, etc. Cataloging provides information such as author's names, titles, and subject terms that describe resources, typically through the creation of bibliographic records. The records serve as surrogates for the stored information resources. Since the 1970s these metadata are in machine-readable form and are indexed by information retrieval tools, such as bibliographic databases or search engines. While typically the cataloging process results in the production of library catalogs, it also produces other types of discovery tools for documents and collections.

<i>Plyler v. Doe</i> 1982 United States Supreme Court case

Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982), was a landmark decision in which the Supreme Court of the United States struck down both a state statute denying funding for education of undocumented immigrant children in the United States and an independent school district's attempt to charge an annual $1,000 tuition fee for each student to compensate for lost state funding. The Court found that any state restriction imposed on the rights afforded to children based on their immigration status must be examined under a rational basis standard to determine whether it furthers a substantial government interest.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Illegal immigration to the United States</span> Immigration to the United States in violation of US law

Foreign nationals (aliens) can violate US immigration laws by entering the United States unlawfully or lawfully entering but then remaining after the expiration of their visas, parole, or temporary protected status. Illegal immigration has been a matter of intense debate in the United States since the 1980s.

Illegal immigration is the migration of people into a country in violation of that country's immigration laws, or the continuous residence in a country without the legal right to. Illegal immigration tends to be financially upward, from poorer to richer countries. Illegal residence in another country creates the risk of detention, deportation, and/or other sanctions.

Illegal Alien or Illegal Aliens may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mae Ngai</span> American historian

Mae Ngai is an American historian and Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies and Professor of History at Columbia University. She focuses on nationalism, citizenship, ethnicity, immigration, and race in 20th-century United States history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jose Antonio Vargas</span> Filipino-American journalist, immigration activist

Jose Antonio Vargas is a journalist, filmmaker, and immigration rights activist. Born in the Philippines and raised in the United States from the age of twelve, he was part of The Washington Post team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting in 2008 for coverage of the Virginia Tech shooting online and in print. Vargas has also worked for the San Francisco Chronicle, the Philadelphia Daily News, and The Huffington Post. He wrote, produced, and directed the autobiographical 2013 film Documented, which CNN Films broadcast in June 2014.

Birthright generation is a term used by immigrant advocates to identify US-born citizens, who are protected by the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. It grants American citizenship to all babies born on American soil even if the child is born to one or both undocumented parents. Birthright citizenship may be also conferred either by jus soli or jus sanguinis. Under American law, any person born within the US, including the territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, the US Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands and subject to its jurisdiction is automatically granted US citizenship.

The North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS) is the governing body for North Carolina's 58 public community colleges and has been empowered by the state of North Carolina to "adopt all policies, regulations and standards it may deem necessary for operation of the System" by the North Carolina General Assembly. On March 19, 2010, the State Board of Community Colleges approved policy 23 N.C.A.C. 02C .0301 entitled "Admission to Colleges". The State Board has been researching and amending the policy for a decade now and it was implemented on July 10, 2010, after completing the full amendment process. The Admission to Colleges policy states "undocumented immigrants can enter the system's 58 community colleges if they are a graduate of a United States high school, pay out-of-state tuition, and do not displace a North Carolina or United States citizen"

Lois Mai Chan was an American librarian, author, and professor at the University of Kentucky School of Library and Information Science until 2011. Her publications on cataloging, library classification, and subject indexing were recognized with various awards.

Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, 591 U.S. ___ (2020), was a United States Supreme Court case involving whether the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which limits habeas corpus judicial review of the decisions of immigration officers, violates the Suspension Clause of Article One of the U.S. Constitution. In the 7–2 opinion, the Court ruled that the law does not violate the Suspension Clause.

Illegal aliens was a topical subject term in the Library of Congress Subject Headings thesaurus, a phrase assigned by librarians to describe the content of resources in a library catalog relating to undocumented immigration. The subject heading became a topic of political interest in the United States in 2016, when a decision by the Library of Congress to revise the heading and replace it with the terms Noncitizens and Unauthorized immigration was opposed by congressional Republicans. In 2021, the Illegal aliens subject headings were replaced with two headings, Noncitizens and Illegal immigration.

References

  1. "Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)". Librarianship Studies & Information Technology. June 23, 2020. Retrieved February 19, 2021.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Horgan, Tau (November 17, 2020). "'Words matter': Why the UC Berkeley Library is embracing another term for 'illegal aliens'". University of California, Berkeley . Archived from the original on February 8, 2021. Retrieved February 8, 2021.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Peet, Lisa. "Library of Congress Drops Illegal Alien Subject Heading, Provokes Backlash Legislation". Library Journal . Archived from the original on February 8, 2021. Retrieved February 8, 2021.
  4. 1 2 Nakayama, Yukare (October 10, 2020). "Waukegan native stars in documentary working to change term 'illegal alien' to 'undocumented immigrants' in US libraries". WLS-TV . Archived from the original on February 8, 2021. Retrieved February 8, 2021.
  5. "H.R.4926 - Stopping Partisan Policy at the Library of Congress Act" . Retrieved 11 February 2023.
  6. Change the Subject (documentary). Dartmouth College. 2019. Event occurs at 32:00.
  7. 1 2 "California State University Libraries to change the display of the subject heading "Illegal Aliens" in joint public catalog". California State University . December 2, 2019. Archived from the original on February 8, 2021. Retrieved February 8, 2021.
  8. Change the Subject (documentary). Dartmouth College. 2019. Event occurs at 52:10.
  9. Lencki, Maria (August 30, 2018). "University library system adds 'ethical' search options so students can avoid the term 'illegal aliens'". The College Fix . Archived from the original on February 8, 2021. Retrieved February 8, 2021.
  10. "Summary of Decisions, Editorial Meeting Number 11 (2021) - SACO - Program for Cooperative Cataloging". Library of Congress. Retrieved October 24, 2022.
  11. "Change the Subject: Labels, Libraries, and Activism". University of California, Los Angeles . November 14, 2019. Archived from the original on February 8, 2021. Retrieved February 8, 2021.
  12. "Change the Subject Documentary Screening with Livestream Q&A". University of Texas at Austin . April 16, 2020. Archived from the original on February 8, 2021. Retrieved February 8, 2021.
  13. "University Libraries 'Change the Subject' With Film Screening". University of Colorado Boulder . July 11, 2019. Archived from the original on August 10, 2020.
  14. "Change the Subject: A Documentary about Libraries, Labels, and Activism". Mount Holyoke College . October 4, 2019. Archived from the original on February 8, 2021. Retrieved February 8, 2021.
  15. "Cataloging Change: How Kennedy Library and the CSU are Working Towards a More Inclusive Academic Environment". California Polytechnic State University . January 27, 2020. Archived from the original on February 8, 2021. Retrieved February 8, 2021.
  16. "Change the Subject". Maine International Film Festival . Archived from the original on February 23, 2021. Retrieved February 22, 2021.
  17. Trahan, Erin (September 23, 2019). "At The Boston Latino International Film Fest, 2 Documentaries Show College Students Changing History". Boston Latino International Film Festival. Archived from the original on February 23, 2021. Retrieved February 22, 2021.