This work focuses on questions of knowledge organization related to literary fiction. How can LGBTQI fictional literature become more accessible to readers and scholars? The project Queerlit Metadata Development and Searchability for LGBTQI Literary Heritage addresses this question in two ways: by the development of a thesaurus for the description of Swedish LGBTQI literature, and by building a curated bibliographical database for this material with flexible search options. Despite the community and scholarly interest in LGBTQI literature, relevant LGBTQI literature is hard to find both for readers and researchers. Subject indexing is underdeveloped for this topic, and subject headings have been historically inadequate and offensive. The paper focuses on how LGBTQI literature can be made more easily accessible through subject indexing. This will make new research possible, such as gaining overviews of the development of specific themes over time, the presence of LGBTQI literature within or outside of the literary canon or in different genres and changing ideas and perceptions concerning sexualities and gender identities. It will also accommodate user's needs of better access to LGBTQI themed fictional literature.
Work on LGBTQI within the digital humanities is still scarce, and related digital projects mainly
concern digitization of material in existing collections or creating collections of new digital material.
Possibly this is a consequence of the emphasis on data mining and empirical studies within the digital
humanities, which may be at odds with the human effort required to recognize and understand LGBTQI
texts. Digital initiatives to recover LGBTQI history often focus on making community archives
accessible [
Subject specific indexing of literature has a long history within early gay and lesbian movements.
As McKinney has shown, activist librarians worked to create subject access to lesbian materials through
paper cards and software already in the 1980s: “the index is a resolutely political and willfully
constructed interface between users and information.” [
This paper presents an overview of the project. Queerlit has four aims:
1. To develop a subject specific thesaurus for indexing LGBTQI literature in collaboration
with KvinnSam (National Resource Library for Gender Research, University of
Gothenburg). The project builds on the currently largest international thesaurus for LGBTQI
materials, Homosaurus [
By using LIBRIS as an existing infrastructure, we can embed the Queerlit terms in an operative system
that is widely used. To date, the work adapting and translating the Homosaurus to Swedish is finished
and indexing the LIBRIS sub-database starts in spring 2022 and ends after a year. Adaptation is needed
since the Homosaurus is constructed to be applicable to information resources in different media
formats rather than just books on which Queerlit focus. This means certain terms need to be adapted
and others added to better correspond to fiction, and terms needs to be adjusted to a Swedish context
and language use. The need for more adequate terms is explained by two of the developers of the
Homosaurus: “When subject terms are missing, inaccurate, or inadequate, people are elided,
misrepresented, or underrepresented. Moreover, it is a fundamental failure of information institutions’
missions to connect users and information.” [
In 2011 the Swedish National Library got an extended assignment to coordinate the Swedish
libraries [
Figures 1 and 2 below demonstrate subject metadata for the same book, as it is now indexed in Libris using SAO and related terms in Library of Congress Subject Headings (Figure 1), and the same title in the Queerlit database indexed with the Queerlit thesaurus that allows much more detailed presentation of relevant topics compared to SAO (Figure 2).
There are some methodological dilemmas when building a bibliographical database for queer fictional
literature. Firstly, indexing fiction is a more complex practice than indexing non-fiction. A fictional
work is not in the same way about a specific topic, that may be summarized in an abstract or captured
by keywords. It has an aesthetic aspect that requires the reader to participate in meaning-making [
From the point of view of the indexer, it is difficult to accommodate queer readings, since they are so dependent on the reading, both subjective and unstable. However, a too firm exclusion of “meaning” on behalf of manifest representation may exclude titles that are expected to be found in the Queerlit database; e.g. texts that have been integrated into a queer canon, and texts that for contextual reasons have been interpreted as queer. To accommodate this, we have included a contextual criterion for inclusion, stating that works should be included if they previously have been described as belonging within a tradition of queer fiction, by research or community groups, and if they also use codes or symbols that are important within a queer literary tradition. To summarize, the database includes fictional literature (written in Swedish or any national minority language) that explicitly addresses or represents same-sex sexual practices, feelings and/or identities, as well as the crossing of binary gender norms in body, appearance and/or identity. The database includes both works that explicitly represent these matters and works that through context can be understood as such, for example through documented readings in research and community groups. This means that the database will also include titles where the LGBTQI themes or motifs are not central to the plot, as well as works reflecting negative representation related to these themes (homophobia, violence etc.).
In addition to specifying inclusion criteria, user needs for subject terms were surveyed. In the period from November 2021 to March 2022, two online questionnaires were distributed to 1) potential users and 2) librarians as service providers. Using project group’s channels like mailing lists and social media, 108 replies were received on the former survey; the latter is still open for participation. Detailed analysis will be accompanied by focus group interviews as part of planned future research. Here we briefly report on the survey of potential end users.
The survey of potential end users showed that they read LGBTQI fiction a few times per year (49.1%), a few times per month (25.9%) or every week (14.8%). Most read for pleasure (85.1%), to discover experiences or characters they can identify with (81.2%), to find themes they can relate to (73.3%), or because they are interested in LGBTQI questions (70.3%). The majority finds information about what to read via social media (76.2%) as well as via their friends and acquaintances (72.3%); while most turn to library to acquire a copy of the book (71.3%) or to a bookstore (68.3%). Their satisfaction when searching online is for the majority neither good nor bad (65.3%), though some consider it good (18.8%) and some bad (11.9%). Open replies demonstrate that online searching is suboptimal. Limitations in searching make it hard to find LGBTQI fiction because search terms are either compared against titles that do not clearly denote what the work is about or against subject index terms that are too broad (see Figures 1 and 2 above for an example). When presented with options for improved searching, most respondents (88 or 87.1%) prioritized using related terms for broader search to get more results (higher recall). Many (71 or 70.3%) also wished for search functionalities that would support them in retrieving fewer and more specific results based on narrower terms when too many results are retrieved (higher precision). More than half (60 or 59.4%) would also appreciate more userfriendly interfaces with the option to browse by hierarchically arranged subjects (as you would browse library shelves in a physical library), a feature that is lacking in many online search services today. Similarly, about half of the respondents (48 or 47.5%) would also appreciate the option for word sense disambiguation that would allow getting only those results related to the specific meaning of the search term they are looking for. These results point to the need to implement such features in the Queerlit search interface which is currently under development.
Looking for information on fiction where the language is often on purpose metaphorical effectively prevents information discovery. Therefore, automatic methods that rely on full-text matching of search terms simply do not work for fiction. The problem is even more exacerbated with LGBTQI fiction where themes are often even more hidden. Intellectual subject indexing relying on established systems such as subject headings does not work either because these systems tend to be too general, resulting in indexing of only very broad themes which in turn retrieves either too many irrelevant results or too few relevant ones. It is therefore not surprising to see that end users do not reach out to the library catalog for recommendations on what to read: the catalog does not support finding relevant information.
The results of the Queerlit project are so far the establishment of inclusion criteria that allow us to
capture both works where LGBTQI themes, motifs and characters are not central to the plot, and those
works that have been important for queer reading practices within research and the LGBTQI
community. Furthermore, the Queerlit thesaurus includes more new interconnected terms relevant for
the LGBTQI community [
The project Queerlit Database: Accessibility and Searchability for LGBTQI Literary heritage is an Infrastructure for Research project funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond 2021–2023. It is carried out in collaboration with the National Library of Sweden and KvinnSam, National infrastructure for gender research at Gothenburg University Library.