“Some people dismiss taxonomies and their revisions as mere exercises in abstract ordering–-a kind of glorified stamp collecting of no scientific merit and fit only for small minds who need to categorize their results. No view could be more false and more inappropriately arrogant. Taxonomies are reflections of human thought; they express our most fundamental concepts about the objects of our universe. Each taxonomy is a theory about the creatures that it classifies.”

—Stephen Jay Gould. “Foreword.” In: Lynn Margulis, Karlene V. Schwartz.Five kingdoms: an illustrated guide to the phyla of life on earth.3rd ed. New York: W. H. Freeman and Co., 1998: xii.

“Vocabularies are never neutral. Things that are included in a vocabulary gain a familiar reality; things that are left out are ignored or even have their existence denied. Moreover, a vocabulary implies a story of how the world works and why. Such stories always serve the interests of established institutions or classes. In sciences, politics, or art, a new way of talking about the world threatens to displace established ideas and the group that espouse them, so it encounters vigorous opposition.

Today, the struggle over the basic terms of public discourse take place in the media and in the work of scientists, educators, philosophers, moralists, preachers, economists and politicians. Both leaders and ordinary citizens exposed to new ideas slowly accept or reject them. Thus our thinking continually changes to meet changing social needs—sometimes in ways that prevent crisis, sometimes not.”

—Ernest Callenbach. “The power of words.” In: Ecology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008: 163

Even though our strict usage of Library of Congress Authority Subject Headings (LCASH) to describe the contents of the articles indexed, in rare instances ccindex finds itself creating new Subject Headings, trying to describe areas of knowledge that are not represented in them.

The reasons for these absences from LCASH’s list vary. As periodicals have an immediacy that books have not, some knowledge or information is just too recent or too specific as to grant the creation of an LCASH. It is a slow process to enter a catalog. Speculative materialism, Temporary Autonomous Zone, Web crawlers or Neoconcretism would be examples of ccindex-created Subject Headings to address these immediacy lacunae; another reason for our decision is that LCASH could be perceived as ideologically charged, and even though we produce supposedly neutral data or information, in sparse instances we feel the need to create Subject Headings that allow nuances of meaning to enter, or simply to state that a social, cultural or political condition exists. For example, Third Cinema, Theater of the Oppressed or Creolization do not have a LCASH. Based on the materials indexed in the database, and on our empirical encounters in the world, we know they exist, therefore our creation of specific Subject Headings.

The last reason for this cataloging idiosyncrasy is due to software limitations. As ccindex’s software is not based on Machine-Readable Cataloging standards (MARC), we do not have the possibility of creating See or See also references. Therefore, in rare instances we have opted to use vernacular forms rather than the ones offered by LCASH, as these might be difficult for the database users to find. Another example, Salvatrucha (gang) and Stasi are verancular terms more likely to be used than the LCASH suggested M18 or Germany (East). Ministerium für Staatssicherheit.

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