Library and Archives Canada (LAC) last week announced the addition of a new Canadian Subject Heading (CSH) for Lake Ontario to replace the Library of Congress’ updated subject heading for the lake.

LAC employees will cease assigning the LCSH term and will instead assign the CSH “Ontario, Lake (N.Y. and Ont.)” in bibliographic and authority records moving forward.

Canadian Subject Heading for Lake Ontario

From: Partenaires / Stakeholders <partenaires-stakeholders@bac-lac.gc.ca>
Date: Fri, Sep 25, 2026 at 4:50 PM
Subject: Vedette-matière canadienne pour le lac Ontario // Canadian Subject Heading for Lake Ontario

Library of Congress recently updated the LCSH term representing Lake Ontario to reflect the new name, “Lake America” designated to the lake by presidential executive order.

Because this is a geographic region that largely exists within the boundaries of Canada, and to best reflect known Canadian terminology for the area, Library and Archives Canada has established Canadian Subject Heading (CSH) “Ontario, Lake (N.Y. and Ont.)”. This will ensure that libraries can continue to assign subject headings for the area using the Canadian name for the lake.

LAC employees have been advised to cease assigning LCSH “America, Lake (N.Y. and Ont.)”, and will instead assign the CSH “Ontario, Lake (N.Y. and Ont.)” in bibliographic and authority records moving forward.

Libraries with OCLC Cataloguing and Metadata subscriptions can search, retrieve, and export CSH in the Canadiana authority file. A quarterly update of the CSH file is also freely available for download on the MARC21.ca website. The new CSH heading will be available on this site in the next quarterly update later this fall. Libraries can also obtain a free account to retrieve CSH from LAC’s SFTP server.

Questions about this decision or CSH in general can be directed to Cataloguing Standards normesdecatalogage-cataloguingstandards@bac-lac.gc.ca.

Source: Librarianship.ca