Subject headings in Libris and virtual bookshelves on Goodreads : A comparison between users and librarians with focus on LGBT young adult literature

Young LGBT people rather search for LGBT books in library catalogues privately than ask a librarian for help. But words that describe different sexualities and gender identities change rapidly, and controlled vocabularies do not, which make it difficult for members of the LGBT community to find what they are looking for when using more modern and informal terminology. We wanted to know the difference in how users in a folksonomy and librarians restricted by a controlled vocabulary describe the content of young adult LGBT literature. Who are most suitable to describe this literature? To do this we did a small comparative study using 50 randomly selected LGBT books, focusing on the LGBT subject headings in the Swedish national library system Libris and the LGBT bookshelves on the public social cataloging website Goodreads. We also wanted to know which LGBT related words can be found in SBI’s controlled vocabulary, to see what words librarians are restricted to. Conclusively both the users and the librarians, controlled vocabularies or not, used an excessive amount of synonyms. This led us to the idea of making synonyms searchable for the users, whilst librarians still use the structure of a controlled vocabulary. Users grouped books under acronyms for the LGBT community as a whole, whilst librarians rather split up the sexualities and gender identities into separates