Effects of the gay publishing boom on classes of titles retrieved under the subject headings "Homosexuality," "Gay Men," and "Gays" in the OCLC WorldCat Database

J. Carmichael

What do searchers find when they look for literature on homosexuality? This question has profound implications for older as well as younger gays in their coming out, as well as in their subsequent identity development. Library records provide credible data to answer the question, since they represent relatively free sources of information, unlike data from bookstores, publishers, and some World Wide Web sites. The records of WorldCat, the world_s largest union database of library records, comprise over 30 million records listed in the Online Computer Library Center. For the purposes of the study, 18,757 records listed under "Homosexuality", "Gay Men", and "Gays" were downloaded; records for "Lesbian" and "Lesbians" were not examined. Findings of the study suggest that while there has indeed been considerable growth in terms of the quantity of gay literature produced since 1969, such gains may be offset by the deteriorating quality of cataloging copy, which makes the experience of browsing records a discouraging and confusing one.<Copies are available from: Haworth Document Delivery Center. The Haworth Press, Inc., 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY 13904-1580, USA>