Home

Previous Entry | Next Entry

Hey librarians & feminists

  • Apr. 2nd, 2008 at 3:57 PM
reader, buddha, dino, me, fish, underground, map, rainbow, seattle, fist
It's time for a little outrage.

Original post edited for clarity and because I decided Anonymous Commenter was right about where likely responsibility lies. Despite being dated April 1st, this is sadly apparently not a joke.

The issue:
POPLINE, a federally funded database of reproductive health information, has removed "abortion" as a possible search term.

How we know this:
A researcher wrote and asked why they were getting fewer results than before, and got this reply:

Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Hi researcher,

Yes we did make a change in POPLINE. We recently made all abortion terms stop words. As a federally funded project, we decided this was best for now. In addition to the terms you’re already using, you could try using ‘Fertility Control, Postconception’. This is the broader term to our ‘Abortion’ terms and most records have both in the keyword fields. Also, adding ‘unwanted w2 pregnancy’ in place of aborti*. We have a keyword Pregnancy, Unwanted and there are 2517 records with aborti* & unwanted w2 pregnancy

I hope this helps.

Popline database manager

To contact the POPLINE project:
http://db.jhuccp.org/ics-wpd/popweb/contact.html
INFO Project
111 Market Place, Suite 310, Baltimore, MD 21202

I would also suggest contacting your senators and USAID directly.

Other information:
Rachel Walden , Resource Shelf, and others have blogged this as well. We are all basing it on the original email and the fact that if you search for "abortion" in Popline now, without applying fancier search techniques, you get no results.

My former taxonomy prof also wrote about it. He makes the point that knowledge organization schemes always have a political viewpoint, which is true -- how we think the world is organized determines what we think it means.

But I think this all begs the point that popline is an open database for the public as well as researchers; and this move effectively cuts off providing abortion information from this source. Are such things unprecedented? No, of course not. That doesn't make it right, however.

Comments

( Leave a comment )
[info]secretlondon wrote:
Apr. 3rd, 2008 01:40 am (UTC)
WTF??
| Reply | Thread
[info]secretlondon wrote:
Apr. 3rd, 2008 01:40 am (UTC)
I presume a stop word is a word you can't search on?
| Reply | Thread
[info]brassratgirl wrote:
Apr. 3rd, 2008 03:09 am (UTC)
Yeah. In most databases, the boolean operators and common parts-of-speech words (and, or, if, etc) are stopwords, to make the textual searches less intensive.
| Reply | Parent | Thread
[info]rimrunner wrote:
Apr. 3rd, 2008 03:03 am (UTC)
WHAT.

...may I repost?
| Reply | Thread
[info]brassratgirl wrote:
Apr. 3rd, 2008 03:11 am (UTC)
Well, it's fine with me. I have no special reason to doubt the truthfulness of this -- it came on a med librarians list, even if it was the day before April Fool's -- but I suppose it would be worthwhile double-checking (sending a polite, clueless email, seeing if you got the same response) before sending the packages of rotten fish.

OTOH, if it *is* true, they deserve rotten fish and more.
| Reply | Parent | Thread
[info]brassratgirl wrote:
Apr. 3rd, 2008 03:19 am (UTC)
Sorry, written *on* April Fool's. I suppose someone should check....

But it came from a *very* respectable researcher, fwiw.
| Reply | Parent | Thread
(Anonymous) wrote:
Apr. 3rd, 2008 06:20 pm (UTC)
I have been following the online thread about "abortion" as a keyword in the POPLINE database. I see that you have copied the original email into your blog entry. How considerate of you to omit the recipient's email address but to leave the address of the person from POPLINE. Have you thought about the fact that the POPLINE person is very unlikely to have been the one to actually make this decision? And that by broadcasting that person's email address on your blog you are inviting the entire World Wide Web to flame her or him? Whether or not you think that what POPLINE has done is right or wrong, there is no reason to invite a living hell upon a person by associating their email address with such an inflammatory issue. This is a simple matter of courteous netiquette. I, for one, think that this is an important issue that is well worth blogging about. But it's much larger than just a single person responding to an originally private email. So why make this person into a pariah?

I hope that you will consider removing that email address from your blog entry.
| Reply | Thread
[info]brassratgirl wrote:
Apr. 3rd, 2008 07:19 pm (UTC)
I did think fairly carefully about that; and decided that as the person mentioned identifies herself as the Popline database manager, she likely did have something to do with this decision. In addition, she identifies herself with "we" -- as in, "we made this decision."

If this is the case, then she certainly needs to hear any comments anyone wishes to make about this issue. I respect my readers enough to assume they will send something more intelligent than a flame.

Many people have already seen this message because of the lists it was forwarded to; so I am not reprinting a confidential email. And I intend to take down the email address in a few days so she doesn't get unncessary spam, which isn't something anyone deserves.
| Reply | Parent | Thread
(Anonymous) wrote:
Apr. 3rd, 2008 07:56 pm (UTC)
By reprinting it you are propagating the harm that's already being done. No one else who's blogging about this is printing her contact information, and your blog has already been linked to in multiple places, so it's not just your readers who you should be concerned about. The Web is public and news travels fast to both the polite and the impolite, the respectful and the disrespectful, the intelligent and the ignorant.
| Reply | Parent | Thread
[info]brassratgirl wrote:
Apr. 3rd, 2008 08:52 pm (UTC)
Yes. This is called disseminating information. It is something the web is very, very good at, and it is sort of the point.

The address, as I said, is the same one that is already quite public. I've provided an extra name and email.
| Reply | Parent | Thread
[info]brassratgirl wrote:
Apr. 3rd, 2008 09:17 pm (UTC)
and not, on second thought.

thanks for your comments.
| Reply | Parent | Thread
[info]jklumpp wrote:
Apr. 4th, 2008 12:40 am (UTC)
I love how you chastise someone for posting without contact information...

Anonymously.

What say you post who you are so that we can respond directly to you?

also, brassratgirl, may I friend you?
| Reply | Parent | Thread
[info]brassratgirl wrote:
Apr. 6th, 2008 07:23 pm (UTC)
ah, they were chastising me for posting contact information, actually; the thread doesn't make much sense after I rewrote the post.

Anyway, now that the NY Times has named the person in question, it doesn't seem to matter quite as much. It occurred to me that she acted as a whistleblower, though, even if it was without meaning to me.

re: friending - sure!
| Reply | Parent | Thread
(Anonymous) wrote:
Apr. 3rd, 2008 06:28 pm (UTC)
Not to mention the person's phone number and address, as well. It is unlikely that a database manager would be the one to make such a weighty decision with such obvious political ramifications, and I'm sure that she's probably having a hard time doing her job right now thanks to her contact information now being public knowledge. Why don't you instead direct your righteous anger at the people who have fostered a climate in which this sort of travesty is likely to occur? Write your congressperson or call the White House, but don't dump on some poor database manager.
| Reply | Thread
[info]brassratgirl wrote:
Apr. 3rd, 2008 07:21 pm (UTC)
The White House is too high-level, however. Find me the person who is ultimately in charge of the Popline project, and I will happily write them instead.
| Reply | Parent | Thread
(Anonymous) wrote:
Apr. 3rd, 2008 07:48 pm (UTC)
The Popline project is funded by USAID, a highly politicized international development agency operating directly with US taxpayer dollars. If you want to complain to someone, try there. I am sure that Popline works under considerable pressure from them to keep abortion quiet during the term of an administration that doesn't believe in it.
| Reply | Parent | Thread
[info]brassratgirl wrote:
Apr. 3rd, 2008 07:27 pm (UTC)
I took out the phone number, and added how to contact the popline project generally. Email is not especially intrusive, and it's the same work address that's posted on the database page.
| Reply | Parent | Thread
(Anonymous) wrote:
Apr. 4th, 2008 12:48 pm (UTC)
search end & pregnan* & surgery
I came up with no information when I searched on the word abortion, but when I used the above list of words, I found, among 314 records:
15. 180999 [View full record]
World Health Organization [WHO]. Safe abortion: technical and policy guidance for health systems. Geneva, Switzerland, WHO, 2003. 106 p.
And
30. 172864 [View full record]
Cernucan D; Ursu S; Radauceanu I; Flondor M; Stefan R. [Abortion in adolescents] Avortul la adolescente. In: Educatia sexuala si contraceptiva a adolescentilor, [compiled by] Romania. Ministerul Sanatatii. Directia Sanitara a Judetului Iasi, Spitalul Clinic Obstetrica Ginecologie "Elena Doamna" Iasi, Romania. Directia Judeteana pentru Tineret si Sport Iasi, Centrul de Sanatate a Reproducerii si Planificare Familiala Iasi. Iasi, Romania, Ministerul Sanatatii, Directia Sanitara a Judetului Iasi, 1997 Jun. :120-124.
AND
41. 097370 [View full record]
Chen RJ; Lin YF; Huang SC. Uterine and intestinal perforation during first-trimester elective abortion [letter] International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics. 1994 Jun; 45 (3) :288-9.
AND
42. 103986 [View full record]
Dimond B. Misdiagnosis, abortion and pregnancy. MODERN MIDWIFE. 1994 Mar; 4 (3) :16-7.

Hack the system, and complain!
| Reply | Thread
[info]susansbeeswax wrote:
Apr. 5th, 2008 06:25 am (UTC)
You scooped the NYT! Looks like they decided to revert for now... Health Database Was Set Up to Ignore ‘Abortion’.

Ah... when taxonomy makes the news... Hrm. I think perhaps I might have more to say on this topic... Heh.
| Reply | Thread
( Leave a comment )