The ARLIS UK & Ireland Cataloguing & Classification Committee supports the cataloguing and classification of all art materials in libraries, promoting effective discovery of library resources for the visual arts, architecture and design, and by supporting development and research in the sector. In the first half of 2021 we organised two webinars, one an introduction to cataloguing given by Victoria Parkinson1, and the second a demonstration of cataloguing by Amy Staniforth, alongside her colleagues Simon French and Lloyd Roderick2. From the attendance and feedback, and it was clear there was an appetite for more talks that introduced aspects of cataloguing.

Cataloguing has existed for millennia but until January 2021 there was no formal code of ethics for this branch of the information profession. But what is the Code? Who created it and why? How was it produced? Is the Code immutable and what relevance does it have in day-to-day cataloguing work now? Can institutional experiences of encountering and resolving ethical dilemmas in creating, sharing, enriching and maintaining metadata be shared for mutual benefit? This article, based on a presentation delivered by the authors as part of the ARLIS UK Cataloguing and Classification Ethics series delivered online between April and June 2022,1 provides examples of how the ten ethical statements of principles can be used to inform cataloguing in art libraries.

The British Library established a corporate Anti-Racism Project (2020) designed to encourage participation via six subgroups, with staff recommendations incorporated into “Enacting Change”, the Library's Race Equality Action Plan (2022). The research and recommendations of the Cataloguing and Metadata subgroup fed into a pilot project proposed as a proof of concept to develop end-to-end workflows, focused on the South Asian Collection and the Caribbean Collection. Work has already been done to align ethical approaches to cataloguing with the Library's values. During the pilot project, new training modules for an ethical approach to metadata are being developed. The outcome will be to remove barriers to access and embed sustainable best practices.

The British Library holds a significant collection of printed materials in, and about, North American Indigenous languages that largely speaks to a history of colonial and settler-colonial projects and collecting. This article suggests one way of exploring what that collecting context means for how we find, experience and encounter language texts in the library. It offers an approach to ‘reading’ catalogues that puts texts in conversation with cataloguing systems to both contextualise and challenge the legacies of collecting in knowledge organisation today. It traces a brief history of the Library of Congress Subject Heading (LCSH), ‘Indians of North America—Languages’, a term that reoccurs in the British Library's catalogue. This history shows how parts of the catalogue are artefacts of problematic bodies of knowledge, whilst also surfacing examples of Indigenous resistance that can be used to reframe the catalogue.

This article contemplates how cataloguing ethics might be taught within knowledge organization (KO). This exploration of cataloguing education considers the teaching of cataloguing ethics within an example Library and Information Studies programme. The first part focuses on how cataloguing ethics fits into the structure of KO teaching, including questions about whether it is a standalone topic or an integral part of the whole curriculum. The second part outlines three example activities with cataloguing ethics contents. Six pedagogical points are elicited, including ideas around the power held by the cataloguer, the relationship of cataloguing ethics to the wider library ecosystem and beyond, and the competing needs of library user/librarian/knowledge creator.