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C&RL News January 2022 41

W a s h i n g t o n  H o t l i n eAlan S. Inouye

Alan S. Inouye is ALA’s senior director of Public Policy and Government Relations, email: ainouye@alawash.org

Library of Congress changes immigration subject headings
At its regularly scheduled meeting on November 12, 2021, the Policy and Standards Divi-
sion of the Library of Congress, which maintains Library of Congress Subject Headings, 
announced the decision to replace the subject headings “Aliens” and “Illegal aliens.” The 
terms will be replaced with new subject headings “Noncitizens” and “Illegal immigration.”

ALA President Patty Wong, calling the previous terms “outdated and dehumanizing,” 
saying that the update “better reflects common terminology and respects library users 
and library workers from all backgrounds. It also reflects the core value of social justice 
for ALA members, who have been at the vanguard of this change for years.”

The Library of Congress Subject Headings are widely used in library catalogs to 
index the topics of library materials. The revisions will appear on Special List 21-11B. 
Headings on existing bibliographic records in the Library of Congress’s catalog will be 
updated as expeditiously as possible after heading changes are approved.

ALA Policy Corps Cohort III goes to Washington, D.C.
In early December 2021, Cohort III of the ALA Policy Corps met in Washington, D.C., 
for an in-person capstone to their yearlong virtual training. The policy issue focus for the 
session was copyright and licensing, with two members of the cohort leading the training: 
Sara Benson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Timothy Vollmer, Univer-
sity of California-Berkeley. ALA President Jim Neal (2017-18), who also cochairs the ALA 
Policy Corps Advisory Group, provided a first-hand account from his decades of being on 
the front lines of copyright advocacy. 

The application window for the fourth ALA Policy Corps Cohort closed on Decem-
ber 15, 2021. New members will be announced in early 2022. 

Federal FY2022 budget stalls
Congress approved a temporary funding measure in December 2021 to keep the federal 
government open through March 18, 2022. The Continuing Resolution funds agencies 
at the previous fiscal year’s spending levels until a final agreement on FY 2022 funding 
is reached. In summer 2021, the House passed a bill providing a $9 million increase for 
LSTA, while the Senate Committee draft bill called for a $6 million increase. Should either 
version be passed, it would be the ninth consecutive increase for IMLS and LSTA funding. 
The spending bill passed by the House included significant increases for the National Ar-
chives, Pell grants, HBCUs, and institutions serving Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, 
Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders. 

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