the presentation focuses on subject analysis and the principles underlying Sears list of subject headings and Library of Congress subject headings.

1. INTRODUCTION TO
SUBJECT
CATALOGUING

2. INTRODUCTION
WHY SUBJECT CATALOGUING?
 The process of seeking and retrieving
information can be frustrating
 Information retrieval systems/tools are
more concerned with the subject approach
 The library is of little value if it is unable
to retrieve the right documents as and
when they are required (Brown, 1982).

3. SUBJECT CATALOGUING
 An intellectual task which deals with; the conceptual analysis
of an item: what is it about? What is its form/genre/format?
And translating that analysis into a particular subject heading
system (Taylor, 1999). In subject cataloguing there are different
indexing languages:
 Natural Language
 Free Language
 Controlled Language: there are two types of this standard list:
Alphabetical controlled
 Classification scheme (Aina, 2004).

4. THE PROCESS OF SUBJECT
CATALOGUING
a)Conceptual analysis
o Examine the information package:
Title and subtitle
Abstract or summary
Table of contents
Reference sources
Introduction or preface(Broughton, 2012)

5. CONT……
o Types of concepts to identify:
Time periods
Title of works
Topics
Names of persons, corporate bodies
Geographic areas
o Consider the level/degree of exhaustibility: depth
indexing and summarization(Brown, 1982)
a) Translation of concepts into index terms

6. SUBJECT HEADING
LISTS

7. Sears List of Subject Headings
Satija (2007) describes Sears list as a tool
for assigning standardized subject headings
to all types of documents in a general small
library having up to 20,000 titles in all
subjects. Has been in existence for more
than 8 decades i.e. since 1923, published by
Minnie Earl Sears. Now it is in its 21st
edition.

8. PRINCIPLES OF THE SEARS LIST
(Satija, 2007)
 Specific entry:
e.g. Rose should be entered under “Roses” not
“Flowers”
 Direct entry:
e.g. Rose is entered as Roses and not Flowers-Rose.
 Common Usage:
e.g. “Birds” instead of “Ornithology”
 Uniformity:
e.g. scope, meaning and spellings

9. TYPES OF SEARS SUBJECT HEADINGS
a. Preferred headings:
 printed in bold
 Under the preferred heading is the DDC class number, scope/definitional
note, instruction for further subdivision and the relationships if any e.g.
Dairying (May subdiv. geog.) 636.2; 637
b. Non preferred headings:
 Written in light font
 Preceded by the word “USE” e.g. Dairy farming Use Dairying
c. Subdivisions:
Types of subdivisions
 Topical: Birds—Eggs
 Bibliographical: Sindhi language – Dictionaries
 Geographical: Trees – India
 Chronological: Botswana -- History—1857-1960 (Satija, 2007)

10. Library of Congress Subject Headings
(LCSH)
 Accumulation of subject headings that were established by
the Library of Congress as their subject catalogue.
 Since 1988, in its 11th edition- other libraries have been
contributing subject headings to LCSH (Taylor, 1999)
 What is it:
 A classifying and search tool- access point to bibliographic
record.
 Tool for subject indexing
 A standard for subject analysis

11. Evaluation of LCSH
QUESTION?
Do librarians understand LCSH?
 Syntax
 Bias e.g. American spellings, culture-ethnic
groups
Applicability in Africa
How many libraries are using it? – DDC!

12. Principles of LCSH (Chan, 2005)
 Literary warrant: the number and specificity of subject
headings are determined by the nature and subject
scope of the LC collection.
 Specific entry
 Unique entry e.g. Homographs
 Dynamism
 Uniform heading e.g. synonyms, spellings, English &
foreign terms, Scientific &popular terms, obsolete &
current terms.
 Pre-coordination and Post-coordination
 Consistency

13. THESAURI
 Aitchison & Gilchrist (1987) describes a thesaurus as a vocabulary of
controlled indexing language, organized so that relationships can be
clearly depicted and concepts are standardized to aid with consistency
in information retrieval systems. The thesaurus have :
 Descriptors- generally single terms but they could also be multi-terms,
compound phrases, names of persons, bodies and places. Each
descriptor should not be ambiguous.
 Non descriptors- terms that cannot be used as search terms but
facilitates with broader searches.
 Hierarchical relationships e.g. “BT” and “NT”
 Preferential relationships e.g. “USE” and “UF”
 Affinitive relationships e.g. “RT” (Aina, 2004)

14. THESAURUS CONSTRUCTION
 Definition of the subject field: establish the depth of the subject and
type of literature.
 Selection of the thesaurus characteristics and layout:
 Presentation i.e. graphical or alphabetical
 Type of language to be used i.e. natural, controlled or a hybrid
 Features e.g. specificity, compound terms
 Notification of intent
 Selection of terms
 Compilers’ experience and knowledge
 Author’s literature and terminological sources in standardized form
 Terminology in users profiles

15. CONT…….
 Recording of terms:
 Use the term record form. Information about the term include :
Source of the term
Synonyms
Definitions
Hierarchies and/ relationships
 Checking with experts and editing
 Testing and production for publication:
 At least 500-1000 documents should be used for testing
 The testing may reveal gaps in the coverage of the subject.
 Deposit with the relevant institution

16. CONCLUSION
 Differences between the thesaurus and a list of subject headings.
 Thesauri = indexing communities while subject heading lists =
library communities.
 Thesauri = narrow in scope (terms from one specific subject
area) while subject heading lists = broader (covers entire scope
of knowledge).
 Thesauri = multilingual while SHLs are not
 Thesauri use single terms and bound terms representing single
concepts unlike subject heading lists which use phrases and pre-coordinated
terms in addition to single terms (Taylor, 1999)
 Relationships in a thesaurus are more extensive than the subject
heading list.

17. REFERENCES
Aina, L. O. (2004). Library and Information Science Text for Africa. Gaborone: University of
Botswana.
Aitchison, J., & Gilchrist, A. (1987). Thesaurus construction: A practical manual (2 ed.). London:
Aslib.
Broughton, V. (2012). Essential Library of Congress Subject Headings. London: Facet Publishing.
Brown, A. G. (1982). An Introduction to subject indexing (2 ed.). London: Clive Bingley.
Chan, L. M. (2005). Library of Congress Subject Headings: Principles and Application (4 ed.).
London: Libraries Unlimited.
Satija, M. P. (2007). Sears List of Subject Headings: An introduction to the Nineteenth Edition.
Amritsar: Guru Nanak Dev University.
Sears, M. E. (1977). Sears List of Subject Headings (11 ed.). (B. M. Westby, Ed.) New York: The H.
W. Wilson Company.
Taylor, A. G. (1999). The organization of information. Colorado: Libraries Unlimited, INC.

18. THANK YOU
QUESTIONS AND
COMMENTS!!!!!!
Created and Presented By: Liah Machara
LIS621-University Of Botswana
15/09/2014