Ways of Knowing Oral History Collection
Interviewee: Alissa Cherry
Interviewer: Amanda Belantara
Date: July 27, 2023
Location: Virtual Interview; Vancouver, Canada and New York City, USA
Amanda Belantara: Today I'm interviewing Alissa Cherry, Research Manager at the Museum of Anthropology at
the University of British Columbia, and formerly the Resource Center Director at the Union of
BC Indian Chiefs. The interview was conducted for "The Ways of Knowing" oral history project.
The interview took place virtually on July 27th, 2023, recorded locally by Alissa Cherry. The
interviewer is Amanda Belantara. Thank you for speaking with me today, Alissa. I'd like to get
started by finding out a little bit more about your education and professional background.
Alissa Cherry: Okay, well, I grew up in Michigan and I did a bachelor's degree at Michigan State University.
My bachelor's degree was in environmental science, and had nothing to do with library and
archives. And I had a number of little short-term field research jobs, and things like that in the
90s. And I ended up taking what was supposed to only be a three month job in Yellowstone
Park in the summer of 1997 in the library and archives there. And that ended up becoming a six
year job, working in the library and archives in Yellowstone. And I decided to, for a number of
reasons, largely political, I decided to leave Yellowstone in 2003, and come to Vancouver and
do a master's degree at the University of British Columbia. So I did my MLIS at UBC, and
graduated in 2005. And while I was in school, I worked at X̱wi7x̱wa Library, the First Nations
Library at UBC. And then I also had a short-term job with the BC Aboriginal Childcare Society.
And then I started my position with the Union of BC Indian Chiefs in 2006.
Belantara: And so what initially drew your interest to librarianship and knowledge organization
specifically?
Cherry: Well, when I took that job in Yellowstone, I was thinking, this little job, I had applied for a
number of field research jobs there doing like geology, hydrology, hot spring research, I'm really
into hot springs. And was thinking I was gonna go down that road in my career in geology. And I
thought I didn't get any of those jobs. And I also had applied for a job in a museum, in the
museum at Yellowstone. And I really wanted that job. I had a bit of a gallery and museum
background also, and did not get that job. But they called me a little while later, and offered me
this job in the library. And I had a little bit of library experience, I had a very short-term job in
the library at Michigan State when I was there. Both my parents are lawyers and I did some
help maintaining their personal law library in their practice. So I had a little bit of a library
background, but, at that time, like I was very anti-computer. And this job was specifically to
automate the library, to basically convert the card catalog, into a mark record database. And I
had no idea, but I really just wanted to go back to Yellowstone. I had spent a summer waiting
tables there a few years earlier, and I really just wanted to go hiking and hot springing in
Yellowstone for the summer. So I took the job in the library, thinking I would weasel my way
into some cool field research job there. But, I soon discovered that all of those jobs are
seasonal. And people do not, yeah, stay on year round in those cool field research jobs. There's
something called the government ski team, that's basically everyone's unemployed in the
winter. Whereas this job in the library was ongoing and year round, and it was also almost full-
time, but not quite. So I could pick up a little bit of side work doing other things, I actually did
work on a GIS hot springs survey and did a little archeology work and other things like that. But
I sort of discovered that I really enjoyed working in the library, and was actually quite good at it.
So that's how my library career began.
Belantara: You said that you had to convert the catalog to an online catalog, how did you really start
working with knowledge organization projects?
Cherry: Well, I mean, this was pre-internet. Like, when I first started there, we did not even have
internet connection in the library and archives. So I automated that entire library using
something called LaserCat, which I think was developed by OCLC, and later became WorldCat
on the web. But this was like a CD-ROM situation, where you had to load this CD-ROM thing on
your computer. And we were using this ridiculous library software called MicroCat, and there
was like one guy actually in Canada, I think he was in Toronto, that did the support for that.
And, yeah, so it was just learning on the fly, but I figured it out and pretty much, cataloged that
entire collection in a year or two.
Belantara: At that point, did you ever imagine that you would be leading classification projects in the
future?
Cherry: No, no, at that point I was still looking for that cooler job of being out in the field. And being
paid to go hiking and all of that, yeah, so...
Belantara: And so now that you've been working in libraries for some time, what would you say
challenges you most about the field?
Cherry: Well, I don't know. I mean, there has been a lot of technology, as far as how we do things. Yes,
the systems I use now are much, much better than the systems I used back in the beginning
then. But, yeah, just kind of staying on top of the changes and the progression of the way
research is done and things like that. Like, I have always worked in highly specialized research
libraries, so there's been that niche of getting a very small group of people the information they
need, and in the way that they want to receive it. So, yeah, kind of like rolling with those
changes and hopefully providing the information people are looking for and better in their
ways.
Belantara: And so what led you to work at the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs Resource Center?
Cherry: Well, how I ended up there, like I said, my first year of grad school at UBC I was actually still
working remotely for Yellowstone. I wrote myself a bunch of contracts before I left, and was
doing some cataloging of various different things remotely, as well as building some boxes for
some old ledger books and doing some stuff like that. So that first year, I was pretty much still
working for Yellowstone. But then, I decided I'm at a big university, maybe I should get some
academic library experience. And I was actually living on a First Nations reserve. I was living on
xʷməθkʷəy̓əm Reserve when I was doing my master's degree. So a lot of my friends and
colleagues were Indigenous First Nations people, and they're like, "Well, if you're gonna work at
a library at UBC, you better work at X̱wi7x̱wa Library." And I remember one day, I actually
walked all over campus and went to all the little libraries, all the branches, and was trying to
decide where I wanted to work at UBC. And X̱wi7x̱wa Library, the First Nations library, was by
far the coolest library. It's round, it's designed after a interior Salish pit house. There's a really
cool little water feature outside, it's very close to Wreck Beach. So I decided, yes, okay, they're
right, I really should get a job at this library. So I did apply for a job there. Also, my best friend in
library school is Camille Callison, who is Tahltan, and she had experience working there too. So
she also encouraged me to get that job. And I was pretty much the only one that wanted to do
projects with her on Indigenous stuff. I did have a little bit of a background in that from my time
in Yellowstone, because there are 27 different tribes that have formal affiliation with
Yellowstone and lots of others that do not. And so we did a fair bit of that kind of stuff, where
we did allow ceremonial use of objects in the museum, and that was a fairly popular research
topic in Yellowstone. So I had a little bit of background in that area. And anyway, after I
graduated, for a while, I was still thinking I might go back to Yellowstone, but they didn't really
offer me anything good enough to come back, I thought, after I had the master's degree. I took
a little short-term contract job, actually picking up on a project that Camille was working on
with the BC Aboriginal Childcare Society. And then it was someone that I actually worked with,
a law student who had just graduated who I worked with at X̱wi7x̱wa, who working for the
UBCIC, for the Union of BC Indian Chiefs. She told me about the resource center director, the
librarian and archivist job opening up there, and encouraged me to apply. And I actually did
work full-time after I graduated for about nine months at X̱wi7x̱wa. This wasn't right after I
graduated, I had about a year and a half experience working at X̱wi7x̱wa. Anyway, Myrna
encouraged me to apply. And Kim Lawson, who had that job before me, also encouraged me to
apply for that job, so I did. And I was actually down in California, staying with my grandmother,
planning on moving down there when I got the call and got offered that job at the UBCIC. They
wanted me to make a commitment for at least a couple of years, and I decided I could do that,
that that sounded like a cool enough, interesting enough job that aligned with a lot of my
principles and ethics. So I decided I wanted to do it. And, yeah, two years turned into about
nine at the UBCIC.
Belantara: And so in your article, you and your co-author, Mukunda, explained that the impetus to
reclassify the UBCIC library was that the library had been in classification limbo, as well as an
influx of materials via a new collection and a large donation. Can you describe any
conversations from this time when the library and UBCIC staff made this decision and
commitment?
Cherry: Yes, like, I had just kind of been muddling along with the current situation of the classification.
And much like Kim before me, she wasn't sure what to do with the classification situation for
that collection. There was a sizable chunk, I'd say, probably about a quarter of the collection
there that was still in an old version of the Brian Deer classification that was done by Gene
Joseph and Kelty McCall back in the late 70s, early 80s, I believe, is when they classified that in
their own BC revision of the Brian Deer Classification. But then there was a period where the
Union of BC Indian Chiefs Library was serving as an academic library for a post-secondary
program called the Institute for Indigenous Governance. So the librarians working there at that
time decided, well, we're an academic library now, we need to start using Library of Congress.
So they didn't really use straight LC, they did their own kind of tweak adaptation of LC that they
called Exploded LC, I believe. And a decent chunk, probably over half of the collection, was in
that version of LC. And then Kim was on the fence, she wasn't really sure what she wanted to
do. And a lot of the new books that had been acquired, probably for close to the last 10 years,
just did not get classified. They were cataloged, but they were put in this in-process section,
where they were basically just arranged alphabetically by title. So they had catalog records,
they had subject headings, but they did not have a call number. So, yeah, deciding what to do
there, being that I'm not an Indigenous person myself. And we had a lot of other stuff going on,
like honestly, my first few years there, I was much more focused on the archive side of things,
and we were doing a lot of digitization and that that kind of stuff. So the library collection,
other than supporting our land claims researchers, I wasn't that worried about it. I was trying to
digitize a bunch of at-risk media, so that was kind of my focus for the first few years. But what
sort of forced my hand on that, and made me decide that we had to do something, was that we
were offered this fairly massive environmental science collection, and kind of wish I would've
been a lot more selective in what I kept. It ended up being close to 12,000 books, which is fairly
significant and pretty much doubled the size of the library there. So I knew whatever I did,
when we were cataloging and processing that new donation, there would be no going back.
That was going to be a lot of work, but an opportunity at the same time and we needed to do
something. Again, not being an Indigenous person, I didn't feel like I was really the person that
should be revising the Brian Deer. But after talking to lots of different people working in
Indigenous heritage circles, I was very much encouraged to do a revision, and revive the Brian
Deer Classification for that collection. And I actually contacted Brian Deer himself, and he was
so gracious and encouraging. And told me to do it, and so I did. But a lot of other people,
Camille Callison, Gene Joseph, and a host of others, many of which are credited in that article,
all really helped a lot with this. And Keshav, who is my co-author on the article, he was really
helpful. And largely, what he did for me were mappings. So between the new scheme and our
version of LC and our older version of the Brian Deer scheme, to try to make the classification,
reclassification, be more consistent and go more smoothly, because a lot of that work was done
by students and not by me.
Belantara: Was anybody else that you worked with within the library hesitant to take this project on, just
because of its sheer scale and the project of reclassifying everything?
Cherry: Well, honestly, things were pretty tight at that time and I did not have a lot of staff in the
library. And in fact, during most of the time of this project, it was all me in there.
We had some massive funding cuts, and we did have to let our archivists go who had been there for a while.
And we had another digitization librarian who was working with us, that took a better job at
UBC actually. So we did not have the funds to refill that position. So I was just scraping together
whatever help I could, basically through grant writing. So it was kind of all me, and a couple of
little short-term contract people that were really supposed to be working on other projects,
and not the library classification, that were there at that time. My boss, who was the research
director there who managed all of the land claims research, and our executive director, they
thought it was a good idea to take this large donation. And they really liked the idea of reviving
the Deer and getting rid of the LC.
Belantara: And so as you mentioned before, the library had initially been organized using the Brian Deer
Classification. For listeners who might be unfamiliar with Deer's work, could you briefly describe
the system and how its design facilitates modification for specific collections or libraries?
Cherry: So Brian Deer, back in the 1970s, I believe, it may have even been a little earlier, he was one of
the very first First Nations people to become an official librarian and do a Master of Library
Science back then. And he was working for what was then called the National Indian
Brotherhood, which is now called the Assembly of First Nations. And he developed this system
that was a little bit more of a records management scheme for how they were using it there at
least initially for arranging internal files, but the system was also applied to books as well. And
George Manuel, who was the President of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, saw that collection
and really liked how it was arranged, and said, "We need to do something similar to this." And,
anyway, Gene Joseph was working for the Union of BC Indian Chiefs at that time. She wasn't
doing library and archive stuff then, I think she was working largely in fisheries and other
initiatives that they had going on. But anyway, they decided to implement this system and do a
BC revision of it for the UBCIC collection there. And I think at that time, Brian had already left
the NIB/AFN and was back in his community. He actually ran a video store for a long time, and
didn't do a lot of work in libraries once he returned home. But, anyway, I believe his successor
there was someone named Kelty McCall, or I know Kelty McCall was involved with doing this
revision with Gene at the union. And it was working on that project that I believe inspired Gene
to go and do an MLIS at UBC. And I think she became the first First Nations person from British
Columbia to become an official librarian. And she was the founding head of X̱wi7x̱wa Library as
well. And she did a different version of the Brian Deer Classification for X̱wi7x̱wa, which is still in
place and being tweaked and modified and brought into the future there. So that's kind of the
short version of the origin story of that classification scheme. And it has not just been used in
those two places, there have been number of different versions used all over the place, lots in
small First Nations cultural centers and other places. The revision I did of it kind of inspired
some other people to take that and tweak it for themselves and run with it. So I know that's
been done a number of places, in Quebec, in Minnesota, in Manitoba, and other places. And
Camille Callison also took that version that I did and kind of generalized it, so it could be a little
bit more easily adaptable and not so focused on BC and all this environmental stuff. And I
believe she is calling that now, instead of just continuing to call it the Brian Deer, who
unfortunately passed away not too long ago, calling it the IMC, or the Indigenous Materials
Classification. So as this moves forward, I think that is the term that might get applied to it, but
everybody that's used it still calls it the Deer.
Belantara: And so is there something about the Brian Deer system or the IMC that helps facilitate
modification?
Cherry: Well, it is quite easily adaptable. One thing that I like about it, compared to something like
Dewey, where you're dealing with numbers and stuck with groupings of 10, is this is primarily
an alpha system. So you have more characters to work with, you don't run out in 10 and start
having to add another digit or something like that. So I do like that. But, again from my personal
correspondence with Brian Deer and from what I've been told from other people that have
worked on it, with it earlier, than myself, kind of the way that I have used it, and the versions of
it that I have done... And I'm actually doing a similar project, where I'm not using the Deer or
the IMC exactly, but we're doing a big library reclassification project at the museum where I
work now. Now, we have been using a custom scheme that was designed specifically for that
collection for decades. So we don't really have the baggage of LC or Dewey, or the mainstream
things. So I have decided to just revise that, and not throw it out the window. But I am
incorporating different elements, and I'm pulling a lot of that from the Deer. But my
understanding of it is basically placing your community, your collection, yourself at the center,
at the beginning of the classification and then going out from there, however that is. So you're
giving kind of priority and importance to the stuff that's most important to you, to your local
knowledge, and then spreading out from there. And again, depending on the nature of the
collection, it's quite flexible, and I enjoy doing this kind of classification work. But I've also
found that, I mean, it's not divine inspiration, but like if it's not clicking, if it's not coming to you,
you kind of can't force it. Like, you have to have that spark, that vision, that like aha moment of
this is how it should be. And the other thing that I have done is trying not to kind of impose how
I think things should be. Like, the system I did for the UBCIC and the system I'm doing now for
MoA, it's basically a reflection of the collection. And I have found that if you look closely and
analyze the collection and identify those natural groupings and themes that run through it, how
it should be arranged sort of reveals itself. And another thing that I have found working on
these kind of projects is it's never done. You know, these kinds of classification systems are
living documents that will need to be revised and changed. Like, the original version of the Deer
that I was working with from the 70s, there was nothing about climate change. And now for
that kind of collection and these kinds of things, like it's all about climate change, and all of the
other implications that the environment is suffering from as a result. Yes, that is another big
word of warning. If you're revising a classification scheme, like you need to allow for it to
change over time. Leave some blank areas, because you might need them for something else
that you never thought of moving forward in the future. And you don't wanna have to just start
slapping things on to the end, which is actually what happened with the system that's been in
place at MoA. So yes, yeah, and then, again, like not being afraid to change things. If you
realize, oh man, like, we could have done this a lot better, this doesn't make sense, we need to
move this stuff over here. Like, don't consider it done, done. You might wanna hold off on
printing those fine labels and doing things like that until you're really sure that this is how it's
gonna shake out.
Belantara: You mentioned that the BDC really starts from the perspective of the local and then radiates
outward. In addition to that, could you talk about any aspects of Brian Deer system, or the
Brian Deer classification, that you find most inspiring or useful?
Cherry: Well, another thing I really try to do in my version of it, being that it's an alpha system and
using letters, was trying to be a little alliterative with those letters. So like, it kind of made
sense. So that is another thing I really liked about that, that numbers just can't do. And so,
yeah, you know, what I'm doing with the system at MoA, which is a numeric system, it looks a
lot like the Dewey decimal system, but it's not at all. But I am using some other alpha cutters, I
guess you could kind of call 'em that, that word cutter might not be the best term, but it's still
the term I use for using different categories within a larger classification category. And, yeah,
so, trying to make it a little alliterative so, you know, those little three or four letter codes
match up with whatever word. Or, in a lot of cases, at least with this revision I'm doing here, it's
matching up with, you know, different nation band names, as well as different types of material
culture and different kinds of art forms. So yeah, trying to make that line up. And, yeah, just
having the flexibility, again, of being able to put the things that are most important, or, you
know, maybe not necessarily that you have the most of in your collection, but, you know,
whatever is deemed to be the most important thing right up front, and then trickling down
from there. Or, you know, however it makes sense.
Belantara: And so, you've written that efforts to revise LCC and DDC, that while aiming to improve
subject access for Indigenous peoples, they're simply modifying prevailing Eurocentric
categories and knowledge systems that are fundamentally incommensurate with Indigenous
ways of thought. Can you say more about how these systems are incommensurate, and share
any observations on how this shapes information retrieval?
Cherry: Well, again, I mean, one thing is just changing terminology. And, you know, I will acknowledge
that both LC and Librarian Archives Canada, and a lot of people, are trying, you know, to make
moves in the right directions. You know, generally librarians in general are trying to do the right
thing, I think. That's one of the things that kind of drew me to the profession is a little bit of the
ethics, and stuff surrounding what librarians do with regard to censorship and the freedom of
information and all of that kind of stuff. But, yeah, sometimes there just aren't those words and
it's largely a completely different worldview. You know, not being an Indigenous person myself,
I don't have that worldview, but, you know, I can recognize the difference. And I would also say,
you know, like the historic baggage of LC and stuff, and especially in thinking about things like
material culture and art, is a lot of the Indigenous art forms don't end up in fine art. You know,
they end up more in the handicrafts. And, you know, the big red flag with LC and Dewey is most
of the stuff about Indigenous people ends up in the history section, as if these people no longer
exist, which is not the case at all. So, you know, again, you can't blow up the entire classification
system to tweak that kind of thing. You know, there's been some progress made at LC in the
law classification, and actually I was contacted by the person that did that. And I think our little,
you know, we had a big Aboriginal title in rights section that maybe informed that a wee little
bit. But, yeah, it's just a completely different approach. You know, there isn't a good place to
put things like self-determination and self-governance. You know, where do you put that? Can
you novelly use a section on governance for your collection? Sure, but, you know, can you add
other subject headings that might make that clear? Yes, but you probably can't use the zero in
the second indicator and call it an LC heading, you know? You're gonna have to call it something
else, a local heading.
Belantara: You've mentioned Brian Deer and Gene Joseph a few times during your interview. In what
ways did they help support the UBCIC modification, and do you have memories of
conversations with them during this time?
Cherry: Well, I don't think Brian Deer had a whole lot to do with the UBCIC implementation, but I
believe that was largely all Gene back when it was first done the first time around. So I don't
know, you know, I was not there, I've had a little bit of conversations. Gene did review my
version of the Deer and gave a lot of input, all of which I incorporated into it. And, yeah, you
know, one of the things she has said too, and I wish we were at that point, is that, you know,
she really wanted me to get rid of the English words for the names and use the Indigenous
spellings, words for the names. And, you know, I hope we are at a point where we could get
there. But, again, even for myself who does not know any of those languages and is not that
familiar with things like the international phonetic alphabet within which most of them are
written, I did not feel like we could do that yet, you know? And, you know, but the systems are
allowing that kind of thing, where you can have those English words behind the scenes. But at
least with the people, the large cast of rotating students that I had doing a lot of this work, they
needed the English words in there. And since we were also dealing with a lot of old books, that,
you know, those were in the English variations of all of these nation and band names. So that's
one thing that I think is coming, you know, but maybe not just yet, but it's my understanding
that Brian Deer did the version for the NIB and then returned home to his community. And then
that was adapted by both Gene Joseph, with the help of Kelty McCall, at the Union of BC Indian
Chiefs. And then it was a quite a similar version that she implemented at X̱wi7x̱wa in the 90s,
which I'd also worked with. But, again, a lot had changed in 20 years or whatever. So, you
know, there was a need for new categories then.
Belantara: And how did you feel about being able to continue and add to their work?
Cherry: I felt really good about it and, you know, the fact that they were both so encouraging really
felt good too. And, again, it was also a lot of help came from my friend and colleague, Camille
Callison, as well. She contributed a lot to that system when she was working at the University of
Manitoba. Off the clock, you know, late at night, all of that for no pay, other than thanks and a
little bit of recognition is all she got out of that. But she saw the importance of it too, and then
she took that version and tried to make it a little bit more universal. And, you know, she's been
really instrumental in getting NIKLA, it is the National Indigenous Knowledge and Language
Alliance, off the ground. And there is a big, respectful terminology project coming through that.
Yeah, I mean, basically it was me, myself, and Camille that did the initial draft of it. I basically
did it then I sent it to Camille for her input, which got incorporated. We got it to a place that we
thought it was pretty okay. And then I sent it out to basically everybody I could think of for their
input. Anybody, you know, a librarian, an archivist in Hawaii, and, you know, all over the world,
basically all of my Indigenous library and archives contacts that I knew from wherever, I shot it
out there. And I don't even remember how Keshav heard about this and got involved, but he
got all excited and wanted to do the mappings. Like, he thought it was really interesting to see
how things lined up. And yeah, so he was helpful too. When he was doing those, he offered
suggestions, but he came on a little bit later, you know, once the thing was already kind of
third, fourth, fifth draft, and a lot of other people had weighed in. You know, of course, I sent it
to Brian Deer, but, you know, he wasn't gonna go through it line by line. But, you know, he was
still encouraging and it was really great. It's funny in this library world where, you know, it's like
having direct email with him is like, oh my god, Brian Deer.
Belantara: And so when you were working on the new modification of the BDC for the UBCIC, how many
people were involved? You said that it was actually a pretty small team of staff, yourself mainly.
Cherry: Pretty much.
Belantara: And so when you were sharing out what you were working on with Camille and all the others,
were you doing this then via email? And do you ever get a chance to gather and share
feedback?
Cherry: Not really, I mean, and even back then, you know, we could have done a Zoom or something
like that, but largely, no, it was through email. And then, you know, a lot of people actually sent
back. You know, sometimes certain people I had specific questions for like, should I do this or
should I do that? Or, do you think this is better or that is better? And that might've been laid
out in the email, you know? Some people went through the whole scheme and made
comments and notes and, you know, sent back a Word doc, you know, that I then kind of
reconciled with my working draft. So most of it was done that way.
Belantara: Wow, and how did you keep track of all of the different feedback coming in through email and
then different, I don't know, were you using track changes or, like, how did you do that?
Cherry: Oh god, no, I hate track changes, but it was like umpteen different versions with a date, you
know, updated with a certain date and all of that. And then, yeah, I actually had a little
spreadsheet of like what was incorporated and what wasn't, and, yeah, that kind of thing.
Belantara: Wow, do you still have access to all of your old spreadsheets and notes from the time that you
were working on it?
Cherry: Some of it, like I honestly did not keep all of it, and I don't have access to those emails
anymore. Like, I kind of wish I would've done a dump of my email, but I did not do that when I
left the union. But yeah, I've got some stuff, a little bit more of my planning materials. But just
as I had kicked off this project at MoA, which is drawing on a lot of my lessons learned from the
projects at the UBCIC, I was thinking like, oh, I should have kept this or that. And I don't know if
they even still have it, but, well. And, I mean, most of that was in those N's, in the natural
science area where, you know, I'm not reinventing the wheel with that stuff. So like, you know,
I was looking closely at both Dewey and LC, and actually drawing on some of my work at
Yellowstone, a lot of that. There's sort of a legendary and massive vertical file in the
Yellowstone research library that is arranged much of the same way as the N's in that Deer. So,
you know, drawing from that. And I am kind of doing the same thing with this new version, you
know, I'm out there looking at all kinds of weird obscure art library classifications that are used
here and there too. So the Toledo Art Museum, where I actually lived as a young child for a
little while, has a very weird custom, you know, classification that they use for their library. And
yeah, taking a look at at what's out there, I think, you know, you have to see because, again,
you know, we're not inventing the wheel here. Like, people have already thought about most of
this stuff before, so.
Belantara: And you mentioned you were looking closely at what other people did with the N category.
Are there any other elements from other systems that you thought, oh, this will really work
well?
Cherry: Well, a little bit. You know, again, this has been a little bit of a while ago, it was 10 years ago
that I did this project, so I will admit that some of it is a little foggy. But the health section too, I
remember looking at different stuff in that category, as well as education. And, of course, the
law stuff as well, which, you know, there's law and governance, and then also the aboriginal
title in rights, which kind of go hand in hand together in that system. So yeah, you know, taking
a look at what is out there and what makes sense. And, you know, having a good flow to things
is also kind of important to me. And that's something that really has aggravated me with this
current system at the museum that I've been dealing with. You know, most of it is a
geographical arrangement. You know, that is one of the other things that I really like about the
Deer, whereas the meat of the collection, at least dealing with general history and culture, is a
geographical arrangement, you know, however you want to do that. You know, I did it kind of
radiating out from BC in that version. I know some other libraries are doing it more East to
West, as the sun rises. Us being on the West coast, I personally don't like that, because that
would put all of our stuff at the end, rather than the beginning. So that's not something I'm
doing in the MoA version. Yeah, having some kind of decent flow.
Belantara: Could you walk us through the project stages? So you first were reviewing all of the other
systems to get some different ideas, you had selected some of the best ways of arranging
different materials that you were working with. What happened next, how did you go about
putting these ideas into effect?
Cherry: What I started with was the UBCIC's original Deer version, and then I took a look at X̱wi7x̱wa
and a couple other versions of that that were kicking around and kind of did a little bit of a draft
update. I also closely analyzed the way the LC version that was in place there was too, and tried
to see how that could slide and jive into a new Deer arrangement. So, you know, that was the
initial things, was sort of smashing the existing stuff we had together, and making sure we had
categories for all the stuff that we already had and what it was classed in. And then it was a
matter of adding what was missing and taking a look at the other stuff that was out there, and
analyzing the collection. And some of that honestly did not happen until later. You know, this
was a big project. And another thing I recommend for anybody doing a reclassification project is
don't get hung up on this one book that doesn't seem to fit anywhere or whatever. Have a
table, have a cart where that stuff goes, and it just piles up, and then you see what you're
missing just by looking at what's on that cart or whatever. So if you have to start moving
forward, you know, do it that way. And then, I tell you, a lot of the planning and all of that went
into, how am I going to execute this? How is this going to happen? And setting up this sort of
assembly line workflow, where carts of books pass through different workstations is how we
actually executed the reclassification.
Belantara: How did you go about implementing your new system?
Cherry: I basically put the call out to everybody. I tend to host a lot of practicum students from the
Langara College Library. Now, it's Langara University I think, Langara Library and Information
Technology, kind of a library tech program. And I basically told them, for two, three years in a
row, I would take all their students on practicum placements. Yeah, and I did, I had 20 or 30 of
'em, like two years in a row. So, you know, that was the meat of it. And just scheduling that was
a little crazy, like making sure we had enough workspaces for all of this. So, you know, I would
call this my library sweatshop. And that kind of was what it was, like sometimes there were 20,
25 people in there in one day all doing different things. And it was everybody, I mean, it was
everybody from PhD librarians that got interested in this project, you know, like Keshav, to, you
know, my bosses like, you know, I think they were maybe seven and 10 year old daughters that
were working on this, you know? They loved the stamping and the crimping, and the putting
the labels on things, and the colored label protectors for different sections of the collection. So
there was a wide gambit from that. I hosted a lot of UBC i-school students that worked on this
project. There were different workstations. And at first, you know, everything got kind of like a
inter-library loan slip like taped to the cover of the book. So it had different little categories
where, you know, I would assign the new call number. And then there were little check boxes,
where, has the catalog record been updated? You know, another thing we did with this, in
addition to a weeding, is a condition assessment. And did a bunch of, you know, for touching
every book in the collection, does it need a jacket cover? Does it need its hinges tightened?
Does it need more serious repairs? Is this thing falling apart and just needs to get tossed, and
we get a replacement copy? So all of that went into that too. So there was a book repair station
and a cleaning, you know? A lot of these books maybe hadn't been touched or pulled off the
shelf in a long, long time. So, you know, everything got a good dust down first. So that's kind of
how that went. And then the next step would be to do the catalog records. And in addition to
changing the call number in there, I also did not want to lose the old call numbers. So we did a
little bit of novel, old obsolete mark to retain the old call number in the MARC records, and
then give the whole thing a once over, you know? Again, a lot of these catalog records were
originally created from students. The whole MARC catalog was created through a migration
from DB Text Works, which was a non-MARC system. So, you know, there were a lot of just
stupid nitty gritty things, like indicators and punctuation and general formatting of a MARC
record, that got cleaned up at the same time. And then there was a review process. You know, I
tried to do as much of the review as I could, but other people who had worked on the project,
you know, a little bit more than others, or, you know, again like the, you know, MLIS students
versus the Langara Lib-tech students would like, you know, give everything a final look. Like,
okay, the call number, does this match the call number in the record? Does this all look good?
And, you know, after one last peak of reviewing everything, things got put on another re-
shelving cart. It's another thing I will say, that despite your best efforts to kind of guesstimate
where things are gonna land in the new system and how much stuff you have in any given
category, you're probably gonna end up moving every book like four or five times until it shakes
out. And, you know, and sometimes that's in moving entire shelving bays, you know, shifting
things over. So that can be a little grueling.
Belantara: And so, working with such a large group of people, were there any learning curves involved?
How did yourself and other project team members acquire the knowledge and skills?
Cherry: Well, I really tried to have really good, clear written instructions. You know, I tried to give
everyone at least a few hour, half day training myself, like when they first started. And tried to
bundle and batch people's first days, so I could do that as little as possible with groups of
people. I also did some kind of funny YouTube videos for some of this stuff.
Belantara: And so I wanted to ask you a little bit more about design of the new system. Could you talk
about how the project group approached terminology and spelling? You wrote that this was an
area that was given really close consideration in your revision process?
Cherry: Yeah, I mean, and the area within that, that had the most scrutiny was the names for the
individual nations and bands. And I did have somebody, you know, that was doing a little
volunteer work for me. She was a librarian at the time, and she did the initial draft of the nation
band list. And what we tried to do was use the terms that the nations were using for
themselves. And, you know, that meant going to their website, going to wherever and trying to
figure out what the current term is, the current spelling, the current character spacing, all of
that, that the different nation bands were using for themselves. And I do know that a lot of that
has changed. So there was a big project Canada-wide a few years ago, this was sort of the
beginnings of NIKLA that was born out of it. This was also kind of born out of the truth and
reconciliation recommendations that came down in Canada a while back for archives and
libraries, and it was called the Indigenous Matters Committee. And we had an initial project to
come up with that nation band list. And we had different people in different provinces, you
know, that were more familiar with the different communities, compile this list, like MoA's list
for BC became a starting point for the BC thing. But then that got vetted by a bunch of different
people. But, you know, we did a similar simplified process there, with taking a look that was out
there and trying our best to use, you know, the terms there. And then, again, bouncing things
off. That was one of the things, the different terminology, when I was kind of circulating this
and polling different, you know, Indigenous heritage workers that I knew through personal
connections. And, you know, there were a few other, a little bit more blanket, sending it out to
a listserv here and there for different things. But mostly, it was more people I had some kind of
relationship with already that got sent the thing. But, you know, I would ask them, okay, do I
use this word or that word? You know, one of the things that we ended up using that Camille
and I both like, and have used for other things moving forward, was the tangible heritage and
intangible heritage, and thinking about those terms that way. So that was one of the
terminology things that I do like, that I am going to continue using at the museum. So, yeah, it
was kind of an informal poll on some of that. And then with regard to the nation band names, it
was whatever they're currently using to call themselves.
Belantara: And can you talk about your approach to call number design? You mentioned a little bit about
this before with the alliteration and whatnot, but I was wondering if you could elaborate on the
call number design a little bit more?
Cherry: Yeah, well, again, I sort of took a little bit, borrowed a little bit from the journalism with the
who, what, where, when, you know, in designing the call numbers with that. Where, you know,
the who might be the author element of the cutter, the what is the overall class scheme, you
know, the when is the date element in the call number. And then, you know, I had these
different geographical cutters that could be used in different areas. One of the things that I was
most proud of in the UBCIC design, and I'm gonna, I don't know... We still haven't decided how
we're gonna do this, or if we're even gonna try to do it in the MoA version, is that by using
certain format cutters that got assigned at the beginning of the call number, we were able to
create like kind of mini reference sections at the beginning of some of the larger class
categories. So that was helpful in some areas, especially in those N's that had got so out of
control, as well as in the law and title and rights section. So, you know, you could have a little
section for dictionaries or atlases or, you know, bibliographies or thesauri and that kind of
thing, directories or statistics, you know? And end up with a little mini reference section at the
beginning of the categories. So, you know, and, again, not doing everything the same in every
category, like some different codes were only used in certain categories. And, you know, trying
to keep call numbers reasonably short. I don't think I really succeeded with that, with the UBCIC
version, but I like nice short call numbers that you don't have to write down, and can remember
like long enough to go get it off the shelf.
Belantara: The article explains that the modified system was mapped. You've mentioned this a few times
today as well, that it was mapped to pre-existing systems, and that some LCC classes were
divided and distributed throughout the new system. Can you share some examples, if you can
remember? And what kind of contrasts in doing this mapping, what kind of contrasts were
made visible?
Cherry: Well it was Keshav that did those mappings, so I was not intimately involved with that. And he
was the one that wrote that section of that article as well. The mappings that were done were
from the original Deer version that was in place at the union, as well as not general LC, but the
LC that was in use there, with a little bit of notes, I believe, about more general LC too. Because
they were doing some novel stuff, again, especially in the law and governance sections, where
they were kind of using LC a little differently than it was intended, I believe. It's a totally
different arrangement, you know? There is no section for title and rights in LC. So, you know,
that was plucked from both law, you know, and politics, governance, you know? A lot of that
ended up feeding into the title and rights. So that's one example where I know that happened,
you know? And the way we wanted to keep all of the materials about the different cultural
groups together, in one section together. So, again, in a general classification scheme like LC or
Dewey, that stuff would be scattered all over the place. So instead, we tried to get those all
within that history and culture thing, but then use some of those different either format cutters
or other things to kind of delineate different materials within that section.
Belantara: You mentioned that you have access to some of this stuff and not everything, do you still have
access to any of the mappings that Keshav did?
Cherry: I don't even know, I haven't gone looking for those. I'm not there yet with this new project
that I'm doing, you know, and it will be mappings from totally different things and primarily a
custom scheme to begin with. So I might, I don't know, but I could get it. I still know who to
contact over there. I bet they still have that stuff salted away in a folder nobody looks at, at the
UBCIC.
Belantara: The classification covers many different subject areas. Were any areas excluded in your
modification process? So, for example, in creating this oral history collection, we found it
interesting that some alternative systems choose to expand their coverage, while others delete
terms or categories that aren't specific enough to the communities that they sought to
describe. Did you come across this in your work at the UBCIC?
Cherry: Maybe not a whole lot, I would say most of it was expanded rather than things we got rid of.
Of course, we were changing terms. But, again, just being the nature of the organization, you
know, we did not have Indians of North America subject headings that we had to worry about
or get rid of, you know? That is something I had to do at the museum. There wasn't a lot of it,
and most of it came from copy cataloged records. But, yeah, that was a project we did a little
while ago, the getting rid of Indians of North America and antiquities and, you know, a few
other terms that just are not really appropriate or have baggage, and there's better terms
available. So yeah, at the UBCIC, I think it was largely more of an expansion and/or
rearrangement of the existing stuff, rather than getting rid of things. Especially when we're
talking about the original version of the Deer that was quite old and outdated, it was much
more missing things than needing things removed.
Belantara: The published version of the classification indicates that the comprehensive subject
authorities would be incorporated into the system sometime in the future. Do you know if
there's work on this? Is it in progress?
Cherry: I think there's been a little bit of work on that, but, again, I don't really know. And, you know,
what we were doing, most of that work with the subject heading and the, you know, ontology
and the lexicons and all, you know, the subject headings we were using were largely done on
spreadsheets. So some of those were printed out and kept by the cataloging stations for the
terms that were most common and would pop up regularly. But everything was available also
electronically if you wanted to see the full, you know, list of subject headings. And, you know, in
that collection, in my collection now, you know, not all LC terms are bad. Like, you know,
there's plenty of Library of Congress subject headings in there, you know? In fact, there's
probably only a small percentage that, you know, are not appropriate to use for different
things, especially when you start talking about things in the sciences and whatever. But, yeah,
so I don't know.
Belantara: And so you've kind of mentioned this a few times throughout our conversation today, but I
was just wondering if you could speak a little bit more about how this revision process
influences your ongoing work?
Cherry: Yeah, well, being that I'm doing a very similar project there, I am trying to learn from my
mistakes. And, you know, it is a little bit of a painful process. You know, we're doing the
weeding right now of the current collection, and I did not do as much weeding of the UBCIC
collection. That's one big difference, is I'm trying to be a little bit more brutal. But, at the same
time, I'm giving our curators and collection managers and other people a chance to review the
books that we are pulling, and kind of veto our decisions when appropriate.
Belantara: As for modifying different classification schemes, and specifically the scheme at the UBCIC,
what does it mean to steward and maintain it? And do you think it'll ever be complete?
Cherry: No, no, no, like I said, I don't think, and I don't think it ever should be, you know? I think these
kinds of documents need to be living documents that change as the collections change, and
change as whatever is important to the organization or the institution changes. So, no, you
need to build in that room for future tweaking and future growth and all of that into the
systems. And, yeah, don't use up all your numbers or letters. Leave a few in the middle there
just in case, you know, something comes up that you never even thought of. And you may be
dead and gone by the time that happens, and somebody else is gonna have to pick up your ball
and run with it. So, yeah, no, they will never be done. And stewarding and, yeah, it's just trying
to make that information available in the easiest, most logical way, is the kind of thing that I'm
trying to do. And make sure this stuff, yeah, makes sense and you have what's important, and
you can get people the information that they need in a meaningful way, in a respectful way.
Like, that's another thing that's important with all of this is, you know, words really do matter.
And, you know, it's important which ones we use for certain things.