Tags again: GLBT vs. LGBT
I reversed an attempt to combine the tags glbt and lgbt ("gay lesbian bisexual transgender" vs. "lesbian gay bisexual transgender"). In fact, although neither has gotten much use (queer and gay have done better) this is a perfect example of seeming synonyms having a very different nuance as tags.
Here's the top 20 lgbt books. Only 3 (in bold) also make the glbt list.
Here's the top 20 lgbt books. Only 3 (in bold) also make the glbt list.
- Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg (5)
- Dykes To Watch Out For, The Sequel by Alison Bechdel (3)
- The Snow Garden by Christopher Rice (3)
- Beyond the Closet: The Transformation of Gay and Lesbian Lif… by Steven Seidman (2)
- Invasion of the dykes to watch out for by Alison Bechdel (2)
- Complete Hothead Paisan by Diane Dimassa (2)
- Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden (2)
- The Original Coming Out Stories by Julia Penelope (2)
- Dykes and Sundry Other Carbon-Based Life-forms To Watch Out … by Alison Bechdel (2)
- The Indelible Alison Bechdel : Confessions, Comix, and Misce… by Alison Bechdel (2)
- More Dykes To Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel (2)
- The Essential Guide to Lesbian and Gay Weddings by Tess Ayers (2)
- Spawn of Dykes To Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel (2)
- Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown (2)
- Split-Level Dykes To Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel (2)
- Unnatural Dykes To Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel (2)
- Courting Justice : Gay Men and Lesbians v. the Supreme Court… by Joyce Murdoch (2)
- A Density of Souls by Christopher Rice (2)
- Fingersmith by Sarah Waters (2)
- Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters (2)
posted by Tim at 1:09 PM
41 Comments:
Can you provide some context for that?
Heh, love the point of view decision making as to which goes first. And I notice that my specifically lesbian stuff is tagged lesbian, but I tagged the queer, nonfiction stuff glbt.
And then letters keep getting added. Last I saw it was up to glbtiaq, but that leaves out p and cq and on it goes.
Actually, Stone Butch Blues is tagged "glbt" on my shelf (and on bearnsaluqi's, as well). While I no longer own Fingersmith, when I did, I'd have tagged it "glbt", though subordinated to "literature-english".
I use GLBT and LGBT interchangeably (though generally GLBT because that's what I'm used to). Both encompass, inter alia, queer and gay, while queer and gay are more limited (I wouldn't, for instance, include transgendered work under "gay", and I wouldn't use "queer" at all).
I'm not actually sure what conclusions we can draw from a "top 20 list" in which 8 of the books are by the same author and very few people use *either* tag for the books (though, oddly, one person used both tags for the same book).
I'm wondering if there is really sufficient data to draw a conclusion one way or the other on this one.
I must say, this is quite an intriguing exercise.
I agree. It's not a large data set. I think it's up there with cinema/movies and humor/humour, however. The difference is striking. It seems to me that lgbt is used by those primarily interested in the l, and glbt by the non-l.
I'd love to hear other examples of seeming synonyms that aren't syntagonyms, on LibraryThing or Del.icio.us. (Something about tagging makes for coinages; I blame it on Thomas Vanderwal and his word "folksonomy.") I was going to search Del.icio.us for the term, but they're down for emergency maintenance!
Also I'm having trouble accessing tag info for tags with / or & in (noticeably scifi/fantasy, fantasy/scifi, scifi & fantasy).
Jonathan: Thanks. Corrected.
Ampersands: Yes. I saw that too. It's fixed in some place and not in others. Give examples? Or I'll do it later.
I noticed the exact same distinction when I was trying to decide whether to use "lgbt" or "glbt". Like lilithcat, I use the two acronyms interchangeably, but for the purposes of tagging I wanted to use just one, and I went with the tag favored by "those primarily interested in the l". Even though the books I've tagged "lgbt" can be divided more or less 50/50 between the l and the g.
Thanks!
It was "sf & f" that wasn't working.
Two more:
utopias & dystopias
utopian and dystopian literature
children's fiction - won't let me combine with childrens fiction. I presume it's the apostrophe.
Hmm, is "birth control" the same as "contraception"?
Satan has the related tag beer. Don't nobody combine the two.
Horrors! "Women's studies" and "children's books" don't exist anymore!
I mean, my books still show those tags, but if I click on "see tag info", I'm told I have, for instance, 66 books tagged "women's studies", but there are no "top books" or "last ten books"!
Then, if I click on "see tagged books", the page shows the tag "women" (rather than "women's studies"), lists a whole raft of people (but not me) using the tag, but no books!!
Similarly, "children's books" seems to transmute into "children".
Something's gone seriously wrong.
Oh, and the same problem with "artists' books". It's clearly an apostrophe issue. Can you fix it, please?
It does make a difference! I use the tag "children" for books about, not for, children.
My understanding is that GLBT is noticeably less common outside the US; certainly any time I've encountered the initials they've been LGBT/LBGT. (I note no-one seems to tag stuff GBLT. It does sound too much like a snack, I guess).
On the other hand, most of the times I encounter groups named with the initials they've been in a student context; perhaps there's an age-difference thing going on?
Sorry, Tim, but you're really making far too much of the difference between the tags. The choice of letter arrangements that individuals use is often a result of what their local groups are using, which may in turn be subject to political sensitivities. For example, when I went to college in MN, I learned GLBT (which has stuck, as evidenced by my tags). However, upon returning home to WI, I found the prevailing usage here to be LGBT. Yet, there is also an annual regional conference that uses BLGT (and a host of other letters that has resulted in the nickname "the alphabet soup conference").
Keeping the GLBT, LGBT, BLGT, etc., separate actually makes the tags less functional in the way you intended for tag combination.
Language: Because color-perception doesn't differ between nations, but humor does. Look at the two tags' top books (the numbers are more significant than glbt/lgbt). Only five of the humour books make the top 20 humor list. Apparently Giles Sunday Express & Daily Express Cartoons is a riot "over there," but not here. David Sedaris is funny here, but not there. Here we read America: The Book, there How to be a Canadian.
The point I'm making is that tag combination should satisfy equivalence of both meaning and social use, not just meaning.
If Del.icio.us were showing any signs of life—two days down? ouch!—I'd try to prove GLBT/LGBT on a larger data set.
Maybe Del.icio.us is in Ireland? :)
Only five of the humour books make the top 20 humor list.
Do you really think that's down to a difference between the concepts of "humor" and "humour", or is it a function of what's published where?
Take a look at some books and authors that are popular in both the U.S. and Britain (for example, P.G. Wodehouse and C.S. Lewis), and you'll find both tags.
By the way, I just separated "graphic novel" from "comic strips" - not the same thing at all!
We're talking from different perspectives. I'm talking about statistics and the way they translate into functionality, not semantics.
First and trivially, I think the distinction is fun to examine, while the distinction between ww2 and wwii is not.
Much above that the question is: Does the distinction help generate better recommendations book-by-book or user-by-user? Here I think the answer is clear. In the greater statistical picture, a book tagged "humor" is more like another book tagged "humor" than a book tagged "humour."
All things being equal, if LibraryThing perceives that a user has an interest in "humour," wouldn't it would be better to recommend Giles Sunday Express & Daily Express Cartoons than America the Book? This is especially true here, where the relative size of the tags would cause the Canadian and British books to be swamped by American ones.
Just a comment on the quicker to separate out thing - if someone folds a smaller tag into a larger one, all the tags that were in that tag get attached to the larger one. E.g. if someone misguidedly folds science fiction into the larger category of fiction, then not only do you have to separate back out science fiction, you have to separate out sci fi, scifi, sci-fi, science-fiction, etc, and then reattach them to each other.
Tim,
Your guess about the ordering is exactly right in my case. (And I have 12 out of your "top 20 lgbt books", tagged as such, so that's a non-trivial contribution to your data set.) I do use the same tag regardless of the content of the specific book.
I like having the distinction.
Um, all the Giles books are mine - they come out annually, and I've got about 30 of them. I've just changed the way the titles are entered in a (probably vain hope that I can make LT's duplicate detection system not identify them as dupes of each other, which they aren't. Anyway, I don't know that they're wildly popular anywhere except with me :)
Well, I'm selling an idea. I'm not positive about it.
I particularly like this example because it is, er, humorous.
There's certainly ways to hit this. I mean, it's a coincidence that Britain and the US spell humor differently. What if there was history and "histoury"? Drama and whatever the Brits would spell it. Maybe the tags should be combined but my algorithm should use some other data, like the nationality of the tagger or the publishing city.
I guess I'm less interested in the greater statistical picture than I am the usefulness of tags as an end user. By the "humour" example, "mediaeval" and "medieval" are different things, but as someone interested in things medieval, they are the same.
Still, it's a great site.
I just want to point out that "san francisco" does not equal "science fiction", "sf" people!
Yeah, I was going to say that might be the reason. But I don't see any San Francisco books there.
Anyone seen "leather" yet? Boy does that argue for "tag splitting"! The problem here is that if things are computed by contaguinity, the book about sewing might suggest "The Original Leatherman's Handbook" ...
Here's a question for tag combinations: how do we handle authors' names used as tags? For example, combining 'nietzsche' with 'friedrich nietzsche' seems non-problematic, as does combining 'wittgenstein' with 'ludwig wittgenstein.' But, I sense there could be problems with more "generic" names (Bach, for instance?). Any suggestions?
But, I sense there could be problems with more "generic" names (Bach, for instance?). Any suggestions?
For anything ambiguous you shouldn't combine it with anything - unless you find something similarly ambiguous.
I separated sf from science fiction just because some people use it because it can also stand speculative fiction instead. I knew it can also be san francisco, bt I don't think it's been used like that yet.
Unique names, combine away, shared names should be kept separate, and unique names may become less so over time, as more books are added. Or when a famous person's grandkid starts to become famous.
Is LT forcing tags to be lowercase now? I was consistently entering some in uppercase, and now LT is forcing new instances of the tag to be lowercase, but my older ones are still uppercase. I think we should be able to use case as we see fit (initials like JFK look very incorrect in lowercase).
but as someone interested in things medieval, they are the same.
Unlike the physical vs biological anthropologists, who are apparently reading different books. The tags don't overlap enough to be listed fro combination, even though it's the same subject!
*goes off to fiddle*
But, I sense there could be problems with more "generic" names (Bach, for instance?). Any suggestions?
Yes, don't combine the "generic" with the more specific.
Here's an example I found (and separated):
"c.s. lewis" and "cs lewis" were combined, which is fine. But they were also combined with "lewis". Not so fine, since "lewis" was also being used for Sinclair Lewis, the Lewis and Clark Expedition and other non-C.S.-related Lewises.
Yes, don't combine the "generic" with the more specific.
That's also how I interpreted it, but I guess the more general question is whether or not names should be combined at all, including the seemingly 'non-problematic' (to use my own term) names. I find it useful to combine 'wittgenstein' and 'ludwig wittgenstein,' but if someone tags a book on Paul Wittgenstein with 'wittgenstein,' then it's of much less use.
The issue may lie in the Globalization of the tag combinations. If tags are supposed to represent how an individual user catagorizes a book, shouldn't the combinations that user chooses also apply only to that user? If I use 'wittgenstein' to catalogue books that reference any member of that Austrian family (as part of an interest in biographies or history perhaps), another user combining it with "ludwig ..." (which would bring up lots of philosophical texts) would not be of service to me.
but as someone interested in things medieval, they are the same.
Unlike the physical vs biological anthropologists, who are apparently reading different books. The tags don't overlap enough to be listed fro combination, even though it's the same subject!
Bah! I've only got two relevant books but I've tagged them mediaeval, medieval, and of course also mediæval!
I'd already used synonymous tags in a few places but now I've started doing so throughout.
Regarding the statement, "Could this sort of social nuance be teased out of a Library of Congress subject heading?":
Maybe not, but will you please restore the LC subject heading functionality? I really need it for my work!
Nothing against tags or anything, but can we live in a both/and universe please?
lilithcat: I use "queer" in preference to both "glbt" and "lgbt" because I perceive it to be a broader term!
I haven't used "gay", "lesbian", or "bisexual" at all, though I could definitely see them as useful for making finer distinctions. In practice (and related to the comment I just made on the previous post), I don't have enough relevant books to make the distinction useful to me and don't want to clutter my tags up.
does anyone else get only quote-slash-star where other people have used html in their comment, or is this purely an Opera defect?
Can you help me out on this one? What do you mean—can you show me?
It rolls off the tongue much more easily to say GLBT. LGBT is just more unwieldy, linguistically.
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