Many independent publishers are aware of the importance of metadata and how it is used to discover new and existing books. There are questions we ask about our titles: How do bookstores find my books? Where would this book be located in a bookstore? Until recently, I did not quite understand how important subject codes are in this industry.

As an independent publisher, supporting book metadata is a necessity and should be a part of routine maintenance—and this includes backlisted titles. Publishers should also be aware of subject codes and their importance in the marketplace, specifically those from Book Industry Standards and Communications (BISAC). The BISAC Subject Headings are a list of subject descriptors represented by an alphanumeric code and are administered by the Book Industry Study Group (BISG). These codes are an essential part of metadata, providing a key role in purchasing decision-making by retailers and libraries whether managed by a publisher individually or by a wholesaler or distributor, and relate to where a work might appear on a bookstore shelf.

Chickasaw Press, a First American and tribally owned independent publisher, specifically focuses on books about Chickasaw history and culture. Prior to the 2023 release of the BISAC Subject Headings list, books on Indigenous subjects—ours included—were, at times, difficult to categorize among the limited number of Indigenous subject codes. For many of our books in the past, existing codes left us to choose between a general subject code with very little specificity or a code that did not pertain to anything Indigenous. So, I was beyond excited when I was approached in July 2022 by the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Committee from the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) to participate in the expansion of Indigenous book coding proposed to the BISAC committee. Not only was this a chance to learn more about BISAC codes; it was an open opportunity to potentially help others who may have been in the same situation as Chickasaw Press when it came to coding.

This was not an easy task, and it required much research and metadata analysis. Input was needed from others who had vested interests in publishing Indigenous books—a community that includes 574 federally recognized tribes within the United States alone, not to mention those of the First Nations, Métis, and Inuit in Canada. These Indigenous communities each have their own unique language/dialect, history, and culture, so identification and inclusivity are of the utmost importance. Another working group was established for the sole purpose of gathering information from others in the North American industry. The group was thoughtfully titled, “Decolonizing Subjects,” by the well-organized and passionate Lauren Stewart from BookNet Canada. She assisted in establishing partnerships between Chickasaw Press and a network with 17 others, including representatives from Library and Archives Canada/Government of Canada, Goose Lane Editions, Medicine Wheel Publishing, House of Anansi Press, and Groundwood Books, to name a few. Over the next year, we would establish partnerships with them to begin tackling additions, deletions, and changes to the BISAC Subject Headings, particularly for Indigenous titles. This working group and the leadership of Stewart was instrumental to the process, and without this collaboration, none of the changes and additions would have transpired. We began meeting in November 2022 and met every few weeks until we began presenting our requested changes and additions to the BISAC Subject Committee in June 2023.

Our group started off small and slow, as the earlier meetings were focused on the existing 2022 codes for Indigenous books, which was limited to just 30 codes across 5,200+ codes on all genres in both fiction and nonfiction; adult, children’s, and young adult. We looked at the gaps in subject headings, particularly for books that were difficult or impossible to code with specificity. We also looked at problematic, dated, and potentially offensive codes. There was also time spent exploring how to approach labels for Indigenous peoples such as First Nations, Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island, First Americans and Native Americans, as “Native American” could not be applied to Canada at all. Not all issues, terminology, and suggestions for subject code additions/changes were able to be presented to the BISAC committee, nor were we able to resolve every issue at hand, but those changes and additions that were approved by BISG and the BISAC committee exceeded our working group’s expectations.

There was a multitude of terminology learned as it pertained to BISAC, such as what constituted a subject code, what constituted a subject code tree, and how subject codes are ultimately treed. The general rule in creating codes, as we understood it, stated that if 100 books exist within a given subject, that may very well justify a code addition. This ended up being one of our main guidelines in examining subjects and establishing justification for adding or revising subject codes.

The process of choosing codes and proper headings begins with identifying one of the 54 major headings (e.g., Fiction, History, or Cooking) as a starting point and then finding the subheading that most aligns with the book’s content. Best practice states to choose one main code and no more than three additional codes to identify a title’s content. Early on, one issue we faced was that many books marketed to diverse readers involve multiple languages, and “multilingual” is not a subject. This is because BISAC is supposed to address a book’s content. The book may not be “about” multiple languages, but the content is told in multiple languages, and existing categorization does not adequately support language formats well.

Many Indigenous books include language, and this becomes challenging for publishers like Chickasaw Press, as our children’s books tend to include the Chickasaw language. Our books might be teaching basic Chickasaw vocabulary, but it is not the main content of the book, so this is where the three-code methodology is important to the discoverability of most of our titles. For example, in the retail world, we would not want a Chickasaw children’s book about a rabbit and a snake to be shelved in the language studies section of an adult nonfiction shelf simply because the story contains Chickasaw vocabulary. These obstacles and subject questions always resulted in the statement that more codes were needed. The ultimate goal was to develop new subject codes that reflected a book’s content appropriately and to ensure publishers would actually use and benefit from such additions.

In the 2023 edition of the BISAC Subject Headings list, many important codes worth noting were added across all subjects, but one area of Indigenous content that was really able to expand was Fiction. In past years, subject code “FIC059000 FICTION/Indigenous” was the single code used for Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island or First American fiction books. This code was turned into “FIC059000 FICTION/Indigenous/General (see also Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island or Native American).” The resulting general subject code allows for it to be treed where other (Indigenous) subject codes can appear, 15 more subject codes to be exact. A few examples of these fiction Indigenous subject codes are:

FIC059020 FICTION/Indigenous/Elders

FIC059050 FICTION/Indigenous/Historical

FIC059060 FICTION/Indigenous/Horror

FIC059070 FICTION/Indigenous/Indigenous Futurism

FIC059100 FICTION /Indigenous/Oral Storytelling and Teachings

FIC059110 FICTION/Indigenous/Science Fiction

FIC059120 FICTION/Indigenous/Women

Juvenile Fiction, Juvenile Nonfiction, Young Adult Fiction, and Young Adult Nonfiction followed suit with similar new subject codes that fell under a general Indigenous grouping but could fall in line with subjects of Indigenous picture books, whether that be animal stories, cautionary stories, family life, health and healing, life stories, history, or oral stories. These aspects of storytelling are deeply important to many Indigenous, First American, First Nations and Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island cultures, making them a subject of many of the books published for children.

When choosing subject codes at Chickasaw Press for nonfiction history books prior to the 2023 new code list release, we were limited to just one code: “History/Indigenous Peoples of the Americas.” Other time period options that offered us some specificities were “History/United States/19th Century” followed by “History/United States/Civil War Period (1850-1877),” but these were problematic, as they are solely from a colonial perspective. We were able to add eight additional subject codes for history, all specific to an Indigenous lens. The singular code “HIS028000 History/Indigenous Peoples in the Americas” was changed to “HIS028000 History/Indigenous/General” and treed with the following:

HIS02810 History/Indigenous/Creation & Origins

HIS02820 History/Indigenous/Migration

HIS02830 History/Indigenous/Archaeological Stages & Interpretations of Oral History HIS02840 History/Indigenous/Contact, European Invasion & Exploration

HIS02850 History/Indigenous/Colonial History & Interaction with Nations, Tribes, Bands & Communities

HIS02860 History/Indigenous/Modern

HIS069000 History/Indigenous/Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island

HIS07000 History/Indigenous/Native American

Many other areas received new subject codes, too. One of interest for Chickasaw Press was religion. Our title “Anompilbashsha’ Asilhha’ Holisso: Chickasaw Prayer Book” was previously difficult to code correctly. Several codes in this area were added, and we are now able to use the new main code “REL124030- RELIGION/Indigenous/Scripture & Prayerbooks.” This code allows our book to be discovered for its precise subject content and, in the end, results in less confusion over what the book is actually about and increased discoverability.

Over several months, the Indigenous working group met and identified numerous recommendations in an attempt to reconcile colonial terminology and better reflect Indigenous worldviews, resulting in 135 new codes and the restructuring and reclassification of an additional 184 codes. Moreover, new inclusions to the BISAC Merchandising Themes now represent exciting promotional opportunities. The Indigenous working group, IBPA’s DEI Committee, and the BISAC committee were all instrumental in seeing this work come to life, introducing the availability of several more codes to Indigenous books. However, there are still many lessons to be learned, best practices to be established, and further changes to be made among the BISAC list and many other industry standards and practices. Though the work is incomplete, IBPA remains diligent in advocating for the reconciliation of subject codes in all spaces of DEI throughout the publishing industry.

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