Change the Subject. Please.

From the Upper Valley to the Library of Congress to Capitol Hill

SUNDAY, JANUARY 12
Change the Subject at the Kilton Library in West Lebanon NH. 2:00 pm. Free.

File under: Do good when you can and wherever you may find yourself. Melissa Padilla found herself staring at an online card catalog in Dartmouth’s Baker-Berry Library.

From the press kit for this film: The power of words in incalculable.  While researching immigration, a Dartmouth College student kept encountering the term “Illegal aliens” as a library subject heading. As a person who had grown up undocumented in Georgia, she was disturbed by this institutionalized form of a racial slur.  And so she did something about it: she and other students joined librarians in petitioning the Library of Congress to change its terminology. Change the Subject tells the story of these students, whose singular effort at confronting an instance of anti-immigrant sentiment in their library catalog took them all the way from Baker-Berry Library to the halls of Congress.  This film shows how an instance of campus activism entered the national spotlight, and how a cataloging term became a flashpoint in the immigration debate on Capitol Hill.

This award-winning film has been shown all across the United States. Library Associate Director Amy Lappin will lead a discussion and Q&A with Dartmouth librarians Jill Baron and John DeSantis after the one-hour film is shown.

Here is a link to the trailer.