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LESBIAN AND GAY ARCHIVES OF NEW ZEALAND

THESAURUS OF SUBJECT TERMS USED IN THE CATALOGUE.

INTRODUCTION

Conventional forms of library thesauri are inadequate in dealing with the range of specialised subject matter in a special collection such as the Lesbian and Gay Archives of New Zealand. They are too general to express the subtleties of thought. They are also inaccurate in expressing a description of the world as lesbians and gay men see it. At the worst they are homophobic and to continue to use them is to perpetuate our own oppression. To provide a subject approach to the world as we see it we have to adapt or create a language to express our own concepts. Hence this thesaurus.

This thesaurus is derived from an anonymous thesaurus which seems to have been originally compiled as a library school exercise, and which was supplied to us by the Canadian Gay Archives. It was edited by Chris Masters, then the Administrator of the Lesbian and Gay Rights Resource Centre in 1982 and this new version was substantially revised and augmented by Phil Parkinson with help from Paul Smith in late 1983. It was used initially to provide subject headings for the printed collections of the Centre (The Jack Goodwin Collection), and it has also been used for indexing. It has been revised and enlarged regularly as the collections have grown and as improvements have been thought of.

The thesaurus was taken up as the basis for the International Thesaurus of Gay and Lesbian Subject Terros compiled in 1987 in the USA.

In the original thesaurus gay and lesbian literature was covered by the two terros GAY LITERATURE and LESBIAN LITERATURE. This allowed no approach to literary works by form. I have abandoned these terms (which were intended as markers for an elusive gay or lesbian sensibility) and expanded the subject headings for literature to allow for locating materials by their form and language of origin. The outline schema for international literature will be found under the heading LITERATURE, with the elaboration for any national literature under the headings for ENGLISH LITERATURE. It has seemed more appropriate to mark the gay or lesbian sensibility by putting a G or L respectively into the callmark.

Phil Parkinson
Hon. Curator
3 August 1989