The knowledge organization system prepared by the Library of Congress (LC) and widely used in academic libraries has some disadvantages for researchers in the fields of African American studies and LGBTQIA studies. The interdisciplinary nature of those fields means that browsing in stacks or shelflists organized by LC Classification requires looking in numerous locations. As well, persistent bias in the language used for subject headings, as well as the hierarchy of classification for books in

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... hese fields, continues to "other" the peoples and topics that populate these titles. This paper offers tools to help researchers have a holistic view of applicable titles across library shelves and hopes to become part of a larger conversation regarding social responsibility and diversity in the library community. 1 browsing through bias/howard & knowlton 75 While it is theoretically possible to imagine a KOS that would use an organizing heuristic other than scholarly discipline (e.g., a topical approach), the fact remains that libraries have been using LCC for so long that "researchers are now used to finding documents grouped by discipline" (Szostak, Gnoli, and López-Huertas 2016, 96). LCC is in place, and the use of shared catalog records means that most libraries are likely to continue its use. For over a century, the Library of Congress (LC) has produced catalog records that are reused by other libraries, and the availability of LC records has created a strong incentive for libraries to adopt LCC for ease of processing new acquisitions (Edlund 1976; Yee 2009.) As Denda (2005) observes, "this cataloging is often acquired and reused with minimal revision or no revision" (268). Access to monographs in fields such as LGBTQIA and African American studies can be greatly affected by the disciplinary model of LCC, which separates, for example, history from politics, and photography from art. Classification, of course, is only one aspect of the KOS employed by libraries using LCC. It is intended to be complemented by Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). While a classification system requires a book to be shelved in a single location, subject headings allow multiple points of topical access to the same work, as Pettee (1946, 48) explains: