Marika Cifor, an assistant professor in the Information School and adjunct professor in Gender, Woman & Sexuality Studies, has been awarded a prestigious 2023 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to lead the development of a free-standing Spanish-language Homosaurus, a controlled vocabulary of LGBTQIA+ terms. Cifor, who has been a key editorial board member for Homosaurus since 2016, will co-direct the project with K.J. Rawson, an associate professor of English and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Northeastern University.
In a recent Q&A with UW News, Cifor explained that “the Homosaurus is a linked data vocabulary of LGBTQIA+ terms that improves access to LGBTQIA+ resources — such as public library books, records in archives and objects in museums — because it provides an LGBTQIA+ specific subject term vocabulary to represent what a collection is about.”
To ensure the vocabulary accurately reflects the needs and values of the community, Cifor and Rawson will work closely with organizations in the West and Southwest regions of the United States. This groundbreaking project will significantly enhance the accessibility of LGBTQIA+ resources for Spanish-speaking individuals, and hopefully, will pave the way for the development of free-standing vocabularies in other languages.