We’re excited to share a series of blog posts featuring the students and workers involved in the 3CV Project!
In these posts, they’ll reflect on their experiences, both before joining and after being part of the project. Offering insights into their learning journeys, challenges, and growth. Through these stories, participants will also share about their time with 3CV, and how it has influenced their skills, knowledge, and career paths.
Read ahead to hear firsthand stories about how the project has impacted their education, work and perspectives on controlled vocabulary development!
Indigenous Metadata Research Assistant
Jocelyn Coupland
At X̱wi7x̱wa Library, the First Nations House of Learning (FNHL) thesaurus is the result of decades of work to develop categories that accurately reflect library patrons and Indigenous communities around Turtle Island and the world. The subject headings follow a standard order of [topic]-[subtopic]-[place]-[chronology], and the current project is focused on addressing inconsistencies that have emerged in the thesaurus over the years.
My first responsibility was examining potential issues in the thesaurus and flagging them for closer consideration. The thesaurus issues were recorded on a spreadsheet and flagged using Microsoft Teams. Changes were made using Voyager. In some cases, Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) had been used in place of the FNHL, which was an issue because LCSH often do not accurately reflect Indigenous identities. Other matters that required examination were deciding between singular/plural terms, identifying instances where a genre form was more appropriate than a subject heading term, and noting areas where synonymous subject headings could be combined.
Once these issues were pinpointed, my focus shifted to examining categories that were not part of the official FHNL subject heading terms and identifying areas that required the development of scope notes. I created several reports regarding subject headings that were not part of the official list of terms. These headings ranged from occupation-based terms to academic disciplines, such as “Language arts”. While some of these issues were easy to address, others revealed deeper inconsistencies with the thesaurus. Community input will be needed to determine if specific unofficial terms are accurate and relevant to the needs of X̱wi7x̱wa patrons.
In the future, X̱wi7x̱wa Library could use AirTable, a program that will make the process of having an accessible thesaurus for all staff members more achievable. This program will allow for ease of mapping term relationships that other programs currently fall short in providing. Developing more comprehensive scope notes is also a project that can be addressed in the future.
I have greatly developed my understanding of thesauri during my time with 3CV by working with X̱wi7x̱wa Library and by learning about my colleagues’ projects. While the fields we are working in are varied, similar challenges arise. When a 3CV colleague shows their findings, everyone in the group benefits. I plan to pursue courses that focus on metadata in the future in order to continue expanding my knowledge.
Research Assistants – Out on the Shelves
Kyler Ford and Jessie Trafton
This summer, we completed a professional experience focused on assessing the efficacy of the classification system at Out on the Shelves (OOTS) library in Vancouver. OOTS is a community, volunteer-run library located on Granville Island. Their mission is to foster a free, accessible, and safe space for 2SLGBTQIA+ folks and their allies to gather, access library services, provide a platform for queer creators, and discover and share stories and resources centred on queer experiences. The library employs its own tagging and classification system, both online and in the physical library, which is centered on queer resources rather than the more traditional Dewey or Library of Congress systems.
We created three different activities to gather data to answer the questions generated in partnership with the library:
- Are users able to find books they want using the online catalogue?
- Are users able to find books they want when physically in the library?
- What search terms and/or tags are missing from the online catalogue?
We had two activities, an online survey and an in-person event to solicit data to answer these questions.
The online survey consisted of a mix of questions that solicited terms and tags, as well as questions designed to test the efficacy of the catalogue by asking users what terms they would use to search for the book and where they would place it in the library.
In our in-person event, we had participants search the library for a book, timed how long it took them, and asked them questions about the experience. We also did another tagging activity where people were asked to generate search terms and tags for various books over the course of an hour.
To find volunteers, the main method we used was passing out flyers with the QR code link to the survey at Pride festivals. The library had already planned to put booths at the various Prides around Metro Vancouver, and we attended five of these to pass out the link to the survey along with cold water or a granola bar. From this, we received over 500 survey responses.
To find in-person attendees, we reached out to queer community groups around Vancouver and asked them to advertise the events and also put up flyers during Pride for people to sign up as well. From this, we received 34 participants in three, hour-long sessions at the library.
Now, at the end of the summer, we have long lists of tags and terms to offer OOTS. We also have search terms for specific books we can use to assess the efficacy of the online catalogue, as well as data from timing and satisfaction surveys at the library to offer suggestions on how to improve the in-person classification system.
For both of us, prior to working on this project, we had not written a survey for research purposes. This process allowed us to learn best practices for survey design, data collection, and analysis, as well as interacting with survey participants in order not to influence them.
Jessie: I focused on survey design and analysis. Diving into the nuances of Qualtrics was instructive, especially exploring question wording, order, and the number of multiple choice vs. free-response questions. In addition, data analysis allowed me to use data visualization skills, something I want to use more. Having an academic background, it was fun to dive into research again, especially in a completely new field for me. Regardless of what I end up doing after graduation, I hope to incorporate data management, analysis, and research into my work. This experience provided me a new set of skills and an opportunity to dust off skills I hadn’t used in a while.
Kyler: I focused on data collection and got to use both my project and event management skills. After thousands of interactions with Pride festival participants, I learned that people are generous and want to help, and readers are passionate folks. I was happy to draw on many of the connections I have made in the queer community around Vancouver to find participants for in-person events and help with advertising the survey. In the future, I plan to focus on cataloguing and data management, so this process of designing and carrying out user experience testing on a unique catalogue will be invaluable.
Graduate Student Research Assistant
Quinn Monleon
Downtown Eastside Research Access Portal: Latest on the Community-Centered Thesaurus Project
Currently in development is a thesaurus for the Downtown Eastside Research Access Portal (DTES RAP). The DTES RAP contains over 4,300+ educational resources spanning 18 high-level research topic categories. A thesaurus supports accurate and relevant searches in retrieval systems by defining the concepts the system includes. For the DTES RAP, the purpose of this community-centered thesaurus project is to systematically map the conceptual scope of these categories and to establish equitable representation of the perspectives and linguistic preferences of the DTES community. As emphasized in former graduate research assistant Sarah Nocente’s article, a community-centered thesaurus greatly benefits the DTES RAP by offering standardized terminology and, most importantly, supporting “intentionality in descriptive language” to ensure respectful and accurate representation of community needs. Per each research category, relevant conceptual terms are collected to serve as both subject access points and reflections of the community’s preferred search teriminology. Primary considerations for vocabulary use in this thesaurus are: centering inclusion, avoiding stigmatizing and stereotypical language, and being responsive to feedback from DTES RAP stakeholders including residents, community organizations, and researchers.
As the current graduate student research assistant for the DTES RAP, my responsibilities include advancing the development of this community-centered thesaurus. To date, the Substance Use, Health and Wellbeing, and Arts, Culture, History, and Heritage categories have reached a level of completion suitable for integration into the full-scale thesaurus. Though, significant work remains in refining the remaining topic areas.
My contributions to this role are grounded in my knowledge of metadata applications, knowledge organization systems (KOS), and subject indexing across varying manifestations of resources. This role also supports my long-term aspiration to become a librarian specializing in metadata. My interest in subject metadata, which involves the organization of the conceptual content of information-bearing objects, is especially relevant here. This project, therefore, demands an in-depth involvement with subject-based classification of DTES-related materials, approached through a community-centered lens. Beyond that, having lived in East Vancouver for over 7 years and volunteering locally taught me about the DTES community through direct experience and helped me understand their communal values and spirit. The challenges facing my neighbourhood such as housing insecurity and food scarcity along with the drug poisoning crisis have helped me to develop a nuanced understanding based on my experiences. Thus, my approach to terminology selection is guided by this contextual awareness.
Upon assuming my role as student research assistant for the DTES RAP, I prioritized developing the Housing & Homelessness component of the thesaurus because of high resource demand relating to the topic as well as its position as the 3rd largest topic category. Developing this section of the thesaurus allowed me to establish a workflow that has since informed my approach to developing subsequent subject-specific sections. Through my analysis of relevant concepts under the Housing & Homelessness thesaurus, I identified opportunities where community input was needed in order to avoid perpetuating exclusion or bias through outdated or institutionalized terminology—particularly regarding terminology describing lived experiences of homelessness. I believe the linguistic variations in this subject (e.g., ‘person experiencing homelessness,’ ‘person experiencing housing insecurity,’ ‘unhoused person,’ ‘economically-disadvantaged person’) necessitate community-engaged research to determine preferred terminology. To address this, I designed a short survey as a means of collecting anonymous community input on term preferences. Distributed in partnership with UBC’s Learning Exchange, a DTES-focused learning initiative bridging academic and community knowledge, this survey includes a structured selection of preferred terms from a sorted list, and open-ended questions inviting self-descriptions of living situations, as well as reasons behind term preferences. The survey design serves to establish a consensus around dominant preferred terminology while capturing nuanced contextual data. The anticipated outputs include a primary preferred term, as well as anecdotal evidence to inform scope notes, which serve to document contextual appropriateness of alternative terms.
An approach to developing community-centered topical thesaurus sections
The workflow I have developed for constructing topic sections for the thesaurus is as follows:
- I begin by gathering all available subject metadata assigned to resources within the target topic category. These pre-established keywords or subject headings, originally implemented to facilitate discoverability, serve as foundational terms. The initial word stock is expanded by researching broader literature in the field to identify additional content-bearing terminology that reflects current scholarly discourse as well as equitable perspectives.
- Each initial term undergoes careful intellectual assessment. Here, I assess term structure and format, conceptual relevance to the topic category, potential effectiveness in search and retrieval contexts, and most critically, the identification of potentially stigmatizing or problematic language.
- Terms requiring further examination are sorted to make way for a community engagement strategy, specialized based on the nature of the terms in question. As mentioned earlier, I designed a targeted survey for the development Housing & Homelessness section to assess community preferences among terms similar in meaning.
- Terms that do not require community consultation but need structural revision are adjusted to align with the ethical and stylistic guidelines of the DTES RAP thesaurus. This process is mostly made up of revising Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) to minimize stigmatizing language while maintaining conceptual precision and structural consistency. For instance, I revised LCSH ‘Homelessness—Psychological aspects’ to ‘Homelessness and mental health.’
- Following standardization, terms are alphabetically organized.
- The subsequent phase involves intensive intellectual analysis of terms to establish semantic relationships between concepts. This entails creating hierarchical (e.g. broader and narrower concepts), equivalent, and associative relationships that reflect the conceptual landscape of each topic area. For example, ‘Indigenous youth’ is properly identified as a narrower term under the broader category of ‘Indigenous peoples.’
- Completed topic sections undergo approval by project supervisors. Only after successfully passing this review are sections approved for integration into the final version of the DTES RAP thesaurus.
Ideally, by the conclusion of my work with the DTES RAP, I aim to establish comprehensive word stocks for all remaining topic categories as a means of creating a strong foundation for future graduate research assistants to build upon.
This work has been so incredibly impactful to my professional development as an early-career information professional. To be able to meaningfully contribute in the areas of both DTES-related research and community representation has reinforced my dedication to equitable metadata practices.
Summer Term – 2025
The DTES RAP Thesaurus
Continuing my role as Graduate Research Assistant this term, the project that I’ve been working on is developing a thesaurus for Downtown Eastside Research Access Portal (DTES RAP). During this time, I have substantially expanded the thesaurus; I’ve collected all relevant subject terms that appear under each of the 18 topic tags, drawn from the descriptive metadata of the resources in each category. I later combined all these subject-focused “bags of words” into one document, then organized each term alphabetically. This resulted in the very first full draft of the thesaurus! I see that the next area of focus for progressing the thesaurus further is to revise and refine the collection of terms to enhance its practicality and accessibility for public use. Overall, I feel very pleased to have contributed to transforming the thesaurus into a more defined shape. I’m excited to see how the thesaurus grows from here.
Survey at the UBC Learning Exchange
One of the interesting and most meaningful things I got to do this term was conducting a survey at the UBC Learning Exchange to gather input from DTES community members regarding which terms relating to lived experiences of housing insecurity are deemed respectful and appropriate, and which terms are considered offensive and/or stigmatizing. I expected that most participants would prefer to fill out the survey by themselves. However, most of the data was collected through casual conversations with participants about the survey questions, during which I transcribed their responses for them. In distributing the survey, I paid close attention to creating an environment that felt safe and pressure-free, so much so that participants felt comfortable sharing stories about their lives and experiences with me spontaneously. Their openness deeply moved me. From this entire process, I truly understood the value of in-person, conversational methods for engaging community members in this context.
None of this would have been possible without the assistance of Matt, the Student Learning Coordinator at the Learning Exchange. He has thoroughly assisted me throughout each stage of the process, and I am very grateful for his help as he made the process of administering the survey at the Learning Exchange space as seamless and easygoing as possible.
Metadata Research Assistant
Asmita Gupta
South Asian Canadian Digital Archive (SACDA) actively collects, digitizes, and digitally preserves resources associated with the South Asian diaspora in Canada. SACDA is an initiative of the South Asian Studies Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley.
Information about the archival resources is documented using an integrated schema from Rules for Archival Description (RAD) and Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS) as metadata schema, and a combination of Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), Thesaurus for Graphic Materials (TGM), Thesaurus for Geographic Names (TGN) and Canadian Geographical Names Database (CGNDB) for thesauri and geographic tagging, alongside internally developed guidelines to ensure accurate representation of the resources. Despite its wide usage in libraries and archives, LCSH lacks the terms that meaningfully reflect South Asian culture and heritage. This gap led to the development of local thesauri at SACDA.
The SACDA thesauri were developed and maintained in a spreadsheet. My work for the term focused on evaluating the feasibility of transitioning the local thesauri from the spreadsheet to an open-source, web-based ontology management tool, VocBench. A major part of this phase involved installing the tool on a local system and converting the SACDA thesauri to VocBench-compatible thesauri.
This conversion involved applying Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) namespaces to test features of VocBench including multilingual term representations, scope/editorial notes for terms, term relationships (e.g., narrower terms, broader terms, related terms), and to determine a public-facing thesauri for the community.
To generate multilingual labels, term translations were reconciled with Wikidata using OpenRefine. Much of the effort was dedicated to understanding SKOS namespaces and converting the transformed spreadsheet into an RDF file for project creation and term import into VocBench.
The reason for determining the feasibility of this transition was to leverage the multilingual capabilities of VocBench and to create a publicly accessible thesauri for the community.
Based on my current analysis and findings, future work could involve:
- Determining the public-facing system (the look and feel, the terms) using ShowVoc, a sister application to VocBench that allows users to browse datasets without editing permissions.
- Exploring the feasibility of maintaining a Name Authority File for SACDA within VocBench.
To learn more, please explore the links below:
South Asian Canadian Digital Archive
Graduate Academic Assistant
Seiji Bessho
Introduction
My role in the 3CV Project was working with the Autism and/or Intellectual Disability Knowledge Exchange Network Canada(AIDE Canada) Library, an organization dedicated to supporting autistic and intellectual disability communities across Canada. AIDE Canada Library collects, maintains and lends out materials about autism and intellectual disability for free. You can visit their website here to learn about the organization or see here for the library page.
My job as the graduate academic assistant (GAA) was centred on two objectives: gathering information regarding existing work about community-based taxonomy for the autistic/ID community and planning the next steps for the project. We designed these steps to inform the next steps of improving the AIDE Canada taxonomy.
Exploring Existing Literature
The existing literature about community-based taxonomy for the autistic/ID community was, much to my disappointment, little to none. Current literature does not consider the needs of autistic/ID communities, nor does it explore their language preferences. While the medical field has taken a recent interest in conducting a very limited, surface-level mixed-method research of language preferences, they focus on preferences between Person-First Language (PFL, i.e., person with autism) and Identity-First Language (IFL, i.e., autistic person). These studies suggested a greater preference for IFL, though there was no decisive consensus, and none went into depth about language preferences. This lack of studies meant two things. First, we have nothing to inform our development of the AIDE Canada taxonomy. Second, we would need to conduct a study to find out the language preferences of our community outside of the IFL vs PFL debate.
Exploring AIDE Canada Taxonomy
After assessing the literature (or the lack thereof), I began analyzing the AIDE Canada taxonomy to understand areas that required community consultation. I specifically looked for vocabulary that appeared too broad and underrepresented topics by looking into how frequently terms were used, as well as how they were used in the catalogue. For example, one of the terms inspected was “sensory issues.” My analysis suggested that this term was potentially too broad to label books focusing on specific sensory needs, especially as there were no ways to narrow down the search results for specific books using the existing taxonomy.
Conclusion What does this all mean? Simply put, it means we have a lot more work to do. We need to develop our understanding of the needs of the autism/ID community and create a method to incorporate their feedback to refine our taxonomy. I’ve begun planning the next steps, but we have nothing concrete yet. We are hoping to begin reaching out to the autism/ID community to receive their feedback and input on the existing systems soon. While I am leaving the project (I graduated!), I hope this project will continue and bring forth the voices of a very
Project Assistant
Saniya Nadeem
Being a part of the 3CV project as a project assistant has been an amazing experience for me. It has allowed me to explore topics I care about while learning new perspectives. The initiative is a response to the systemic biases that are embedded within the traditional library and archival classification systems. By focusing on community-centered vocabulary work, 3CV aims to create more inclusive and accurate ways of cataloging and accessing information for marginalized communities. It also allows students to be a part of this experience and allows them gain hands-on experience from the different organizations that are a part of the project. This is a good way for students to be able to develop their skills and broaden their focus on the different types of work that is available in libraries and research.
Before joining this project, I had used libraries and archives as a student, but I never really questioned how subjects were categorized or whose perspectives were prioritized within these systems. I often found it difficult to research certain topics, especially when looking for materials in different languages, but I never considered why. Looking back, I now realize that traditional classification systems often reflect cultural and historical biases that marginalize specific communities and languages. Working on the 3CV project has helped me understand how much power exists in language and classification, and how important it is to create systems that reflect the diversity of human experiences. I think it is important to bridge and fill in the gaps so that information is more accessible to all. I also feel that by being able to access more information, we will create long-term implications that will impact our future in various ways, especially through the research that people do.
One of the most rewarding aspects of this project has been knowing that our work will have long-term implications. The solutions we are developing can help other students and researchers and stop them from facing similar challenges. It is really amazing for me to be able to contribute to such meaningful work, one that doesn’t just point out problems but seeks to create solutions that can be implemented and adapted.
The work of the 3CV project is just getting started. Moving forward, I am really excited about the further discussions our efforts can create and how they will influence discussions and decisions within the community. By documenting and sharing our processes, with the community through various presentations and workshops we hope to teach others in the field to engage in community-centered vocabulary work and be more inclusive.
We have also been conducting multiple workshops and they have been really insightful for me and for anyone interested in the work or doing similar work to learn and adapt to their own projects. By planning and preparing for these workshops, I have had the opportunity to not only deepen my understanding of the topics and work but also develop skills in community engagement and event planning. Theses workshops also provide a good networking opportunity for people with similar goals to discuss and work on projects within the community. It also allows people to share ideas and learn from one another. One of the things I appreciate most about working on this project is the collaborative nature of the work. It has been a privilege to learn from my peers and from professionals in the field who are dedicated to this work and are open to sharing their knowledge with others. The knowledge and skills I have gained through this project will continue to influence me in my future endeavors.
On a day-to-day basis, my work revolves around collaborating with project partners and students, assisting wherever needed. My position has also given me the opportunity to manage the project’s social media, promoting our efforts so that more people can learn about and engage with our work. Through my involvement in this project, I have started to see libraries and archives as more than just places to store information. They have the power to be spaces of representation, empowerment, and inclusivity when they are designed with intentionality. This experience has strengthened my belief in the importance of knowledge equity and the need for these institutions to be more inclusive. Reflecting on my journey as a project assistant, I feel deeply grateful for the opportunity to be part of such meaningful work. I look forward to continuing this journey and playing a role in making libraries and archives more accessible, and inclusive for everyone.