I'm sure by now many of you have seen the announcement that came through AUTOCAT later in the day on Friday regarding "Illegal aliens". If you have not, LC is finally proposing to change "Illegal aliens". ALA issued a statement on the proposed changes.

https://www.ala.org/news/member-news/2021/11/ala-welcomes-removal-offensive-illegal-aliens-subject-headings
 
This has been a controversial topic in the library community for many years and many hoped that "Illegal aliens" would actually be changing to "Undocumented immigrants" or something similar. Unfortunately, that is not the current proposal. Here is a link to the full list of proposed/tentative changes:
 
https://classweb.org/tentative-subjects/2111b.html?fbclid=IwAR2twTUEttr0tNdgKrXywMd4EbG-P3dnYjango-S58dXf1nxn9AiyhuZ_Vg
 
A little summary would be: The heading for "Aliens" (sh 85003545) is proposed to change to "Noncitizens". The authority record for "Illegal aliens" is proposed to be cancelled altogether with a 450 for "Illegal aliens" being added to the "Noncitizens" authority. This results in both "Aliens" and "Illegal aliens" changing to "Noncitizens" in your bibliographic records. Additionally, where "Illegal aliens" was previously used, a new heading "Illegal immigration" would also be added (a new authority record for this term will be created).
 
We understand that there will likely be pushback for the use of "Illegal immigration" so it will be interesting to see what the final result will be.
 
Many of you have already undertaken special projects to change "Aliens" to "Noncitizens" and "Illegal aliens" to "Undocumented immigrants" whether it be through custom rule processing or through Local Authority records. Once LC issues its final list of changes, we will undoubtedly need to work together in order to determining how each of you would like to proceed.
 
Feel free to reach out to me or your Project Manager if you would like to speak about this further.
 
 

Casey Cheney, PMP | Vice President, Authority Control
Backstage Library works | Provo, Utah & Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
801-342-5692 | ccheney@bslw.com | ac.bslw.com/mars | How am I doing?