Rainbow shelves, shelves with a LGBTQ theme, are becoming popular in Swedish libraries, and may have been created to counteract the poor indexing of the fiction with LGBTQ themes. The purpose of this thesis is to examine how the books on this shelf are indexed in one Swedish library. In order to do so we first examine the subject headings list used to index fiction to see what LGBTQ subject headings there are and if they are lacking in any way. Then we examine the representation of these subject headings on the rainbow shelf to see how the shortcomings of the list influence the indexing. We also do a content analysis on the books found to have no LGBTQ subject headings to examine why they have been placed on the shelf. Are there shortcomings in the indexing of these books? We use queer theory to suggest that the shortcomings of the indexing is caused by the underlying heteronormativity of our society. We find that many LGBTQ words are not represented in the subject headings list and that heteronormativity is predominant but only made visible through what does not conform to the norm. The most prevalent LGBTQ subject headings in the rainbow shelf are those concerning homosexuality, while bisexuality and transgender subject headings are barely used at all. We find that the indexing of the books without LGBTQ terms in many cases is lacking, but in others it is a question of how you choose to interpret the book.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-45308 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Karlsson, Erika, Melander, Alexandra |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för kulturvetenskaper (KV), Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för kulturvetenskaper (KV) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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