Representation of Swedish LGBTQ+ fiction in commercial information services

Purpose Many end users turn to Google Books and social tagging services to identify books of interest. How successful they are will depend on subject indexing applied in these services (among other factors). The study aimed to determine: (1) to what degree are Queerlit books identified as LGBTQ+ books in widely used information services, in particular Google Books, LibraryThing and Goodreads; and, (2) whether metadata in these information services could be considered of value for the Queerlit database and complement its highly extensive and highly specific indexing. Design/methodology/approach The study compared keywords (subject index terms, tags) assigned to works of Swedish LGBTQ+ fiction across three commercial services: Google Books, Goodreads and LibraryThing, against the curated database, Queerlit. Findings Of the 1320 LGBTQ+ works in Queerlit, only a small portion was found in the three web services: 8.26% on Google Books (n = 109), 13.26% on Goodreads (n = 175), while about half on LibraryThing (55.3%, n = 730). This underrepresentation of Swedish LGBTQ+ works in the three international commercial information services makes them hardly of value to the readers. This is exacerbated by the fact that only a minority of Queerlit books found in the three services are categorised as LGBTQ+. The Queerlit database might benefit from consulting social tagging services when indexing both LGBTQ+ specific and general themes. Originality/value No earlier study compared in a systematic manner four different information retrieval systems and identified challenges as well as potential benefits in relation to finding LGBTQ+ fiction.