Why is there a need for a new vocabulary of Black joy and resilience? Traditional library catalog subject headings often hide or minimize Black life and history. The project developed the vocabulary by assessing sources - books, novels, newspaper articles, artwork, sneaker designs, Beyoncé lyrics - that provide the authority to document Black joy and resilience.  That authority is documented in the Bibliographies. 

The word cloud is a visual representation of terms gathered by the Black Joy & Resilience Advisory Committee, who developed a semi-structured lexicon, or folksonomy, organized around two domains - joy and resilience - and three subdomains - play, relationship/community building, and growth.

How do these words help me access content?  Black Joy & Resilience is built on the work of three annotator/editors who examined each source used in the project.  The annotators - Haley, Miya, and PJ - did two things.  They did deep dives into the subjects and people documented in each source, a process called "historical editing." They used that knowledge to select the words that appear in the cloud. The annotators had to pick either joy or resilience to start.  Then they had to pick one of the three subdomains - play, growth, or relationship/community building. Only after those two steps could they settle on words used.  

That's why JOY and RESILIENCE are the biggest words in the cloud. They were used the most frequently by the annotators.  If you want to see all the sources that document JOY, click on that word.  Or, if you prefer, you can see examples by specific words, like Leisure, or Unapologetic.  

Which words move you to explore?