''Change the Subject'' is a 2019

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

directed by Jill Baron and Sawyer Broadley. The film documents

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...

students lobbying the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...

to replace the term "Illegal aliens" with "Undocumented immigrants" in the

Library of Congress Subject Headings The Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) comprise a thesaurus (in the information science sense, a controlled vocabulary) of subject headings, maintained by the United States Library of Congress, for use in bibliographic records. LC Subject ...

. While ultimately unsuccessful, the efforts of the students have inspired individual libraries to replace the term.

Background

Library of Congress Subject Headings consist of

controlled vocabulary Control may refer to: Basic meanings Economics and business * Control (management), an element of management * Control, an element of management accounting * Comptroller (or controller), a senior financial officer in an organization * Controlling ...

terms developed and maintained by the

(LC); the thesaurus is the most widely used subject vocabulary in the world. The subject heading "Aliens, Illegal" was established by LC in 1980 and revised to "Illegal aliens" in 1993. LC has changed terms in the past once they are perceived to have become outdated. For example, the term "

Negroes In the English language, ''negro'' is a term historically used to denote persons considered to be of Black African heritage. The word ''negro'' means the color black in both Spanish and in Portuguese, where English took it from. The term can be ...

" was changed to "

Blacks Black is a racialized classification of people, usually a political and skin color-based category for specific populations with a mid to dark brown complexion. Not all people considered "black" have dark skin; in certain countries, often in s ...

" in the 1970s, which was later split off to provide a new term for "Afro-Americans" in the 1990s, which was then changed to "

African Americans African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

" in 2000. By 2014, many news organizations in the US, including the

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...

, ''

USA Today ''USA Today'' (stylized in all uppercase) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth on September 15, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headquarters in Tysons, Virgini ...

'',

American Broadcasting Company The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is an American commercial broadcast television network. It is the flagship property of the ABC Entertainment Group division of The Walt Disney Company. The network is headquartered in Burbank, Cali ...

, ''

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...

'' and the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

'', had already ceased using the term "illegal" to refer to migrants lacking visa documentation.

Film content

The film centers around Óscar Rubén Cornejo Cásares and Melissa Padilla, who noticed the term "Illegal aliens" appearing in the library catalog at

while they were completing their undergraduate degrees. After being told Dartmouth used the standardized terminology maintained by LC, and that the term could not be changed locally, Cásares, Padilla and other students petitioned LC directly in 2014 to change the term to "Undocumented immigrants". Their petition was rejected. The students and other librarians then successfully petitioned the

American Library Association The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with 49,727 members a ...

(ALA) to endorse the revision. Following the endorsement from the ALA and other organizations, Dartmouth students petitioned LC a second time in 2016. LC accepted and agreed to change the term, but faced a backlash from several

Republican Republican can refer to: Political ideology * An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law. ** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...

members of Congress. Representative

Diane Black Diane Lynn Black (née Warren; January 16, 1951) is an American politician who served as a U.S. Representative for from January 3, 2011, to January 3, 2019. The district includes several suburban and rural areas east of Nashville. A Republican, s ...

initiated legislation to block the change in April 2016, on the grounds it was "political correctness" and disrespectful to change a term which she incorrectly claimed had been used by LC since the "early 1900s". It was the first time Congress had attempted to halt LC changing a catalog term. Following the Republican backlash, LC did not change the term in their system. Library of Congress administrators declined to be interviewed for the documentary.

Aftermath

Despite the efforts of the students being unsuccessful, many libraries inspired by the Dartmouth students have replaced the term "Illegal aliens" in their own local catalog systems, and have continued to pressure LC to change the term. Institutions that have voluntarily changed the term include the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, the

University of Colorado Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado syst ...

California State University The California State University (Cal State or CSU) is a public university system in California. With 23 campuses and eight off-campus centers enrolling 485,550 students with 55,909 faculty and staff, CSU is the largest four-year public univers ...

, and

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

. On November 15, 2021, the Library of Congress announced the decision to replace the terms "Aliens" with "Noncitizens," along with replacing the heading "Illegal aliens" with the headings "Noncitizens" and "Illegal immigration." The film has been screened at many universities, often accompanied by activists featured in the film for panel discussions, and was an official selection at the 2019

Maine International Film Festival The Maine International Film Festival, or MIFF, is a 10-day film festival held annually in Waterville, Maine. The festival usually runs in the third week of July at Railroad Square Cinema and the Waterville Opera House. Founded in 1998, the festiv ...

and the 2019 Boston Latino International Film Festival.

References

External links

Official website''Change the Subject'' full length film on YouTube
* {{IMDb title, 12268540, Change the Subject Documentary films about illegal immigration to the United States 2019 documentary films 2019 films American documentary films