About the Film

Change the Subject (2019) is a 54-minute documentary film about a group of Dartmouth students who challenged anti-immigrant language in the Library of Congress subject headings. Their advocacy took them all the way from Baker-Berry Library to the halls of Congress, showing 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. In partnership with staff at Dartmouth, these students – now alumni – produced a film to document this story. The impact of the film has been wide-ranging, inspiring librarians around the country and the world to examine the ways that systemic racism pervades the institution of the library, particularly in its controlled vocabularies.  

Watch the Film

Year: 2019

Runtime: 54 minutes

Language: English

Country: United States

Change the Subject, official selection of Maine International Film Festival 2019
Change the Subject, official selection of Boston Latino International Film Festival 2019

Credits

film by:

Directors: Sawyer Broadley & Jill Baron

Producers: Jill Baron, Óscar Rubén Cornejo Cásares ’17, Melissa Padilla ’17

Videography: Sawyer Broadley, Media Production Group, Communications Office

Editor: Sawyer Broadley

Post-production assistance: Barbara Olachea Lopez Portillo ’19

Map visualization: James L. Adams

featuring:

  • Óscar Rubén Cornejo Cásares ’17
  • Melissa Padilla ’17
  • Estéfani Marín ’17
  • Eduardo Misael Najera Ortega ’14
  • Lourdes Gutíerrez Nájera
  • Claudia Anguiano Evans-Zepeda
  • Tina Gross
  • John DeSantis
  • Jill Baron
  • US Representative Joaquin Castro (D-TX 20th District)
  • US Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL 23rd District)

 

Change the Subject film team members

team bios:

  • Óscar Rubén Cornejo Cásares graduated from Dartmouth College in 2017, double majoring in Sociology and Native American Studies. He is now a sociology Ph.D. student at Northwestern University. His research focuses on the intersections of undocumented migration, race, and social movements.
  • Melissa Padilla graduated from Dartmouth College Class in 2017, majoring in Latin American, Latino & Caribbean Studies. She currently lives in Atlanta where she works in consulting. In the future, she hopes to continue making films about the stories and lives of people of color, women and immigrant communities. 
  • Sawyer Broadley is a freelance and full-time video professional for the past 10+ years, lives with his wife and their cat in Massachusetts and works throughout New England. He grew up in Canaan, New Hampshire and received a BA in English and Film Studies at Dartmouth College (graduating in 2008). Sawyer enjoys working with educators, scientists, and businesses to tell stories that have positive impacts. In his free time he designs soft goods, rides bicycles, reads books, and drinks tea.
  • Jill Baron is the librarian for romance languages and Latin American, Latinx & Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College.  She received her masters in library and information science from Rutgers University, an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School, and her BA in French and comparative literature from Bryn Mawr College.  She lives in Vermont with her family.  This is her first feature-length documentary film.
  • Tina Gross is the Metadata and Cataloging Librarian at North Dakota State University. In 2016, she served as chair of the CaMMS Subject Analysis Committee Working Group on the LCSH “Illegal aliens” (see its report). She was one of eight tenured faculty (four librarians) laid off by St. Cloud State University in 2020, which now has no librarians working in technical services. Follow her on Twitter @aboutness or read her found poem about getting laid off in McSweeney's.
  • John DeSantis has been the Cataloging and Metadata Services Librarian at Dartmouth College since 1995.  He has been a councilor-at-large on the Council of the American Library Association since 2004 and has served on several ALA Council committees and ALA divisional committees, as well as on the ALA Executive Board. He has also served as an OCLC Global Council delegate since 2011. John served for eight years on IFLA's Standing Committee on Subject Analysis and Access, including two years as Chair. He is currently a member of IFLA’s Bibliography Standing Committee.

Rights

Dartmouth College Library assigns a Creative Commons BY-NC license to the digital work and associated web site.

 

Citation

Citation (MLA Format)

Baron, Jill E. "Change the subject." Change the Subject, 2019. Dartmouth Digital Library Program, n2t.net/ark:/83024/d4hq3s42r.

Citation (Chicago Format)

Baron, Jill E. Change the subject, 2019. Dartmouth Digital Library Program. https://n2t.net/ark:/83024/d4hq3s42r.

 
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