Library of Congress and Sears List of Subject Headings

SUBJECT HEADINGS

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A subject heading is part of a systematic list of terms that describe a given subject matter, e.g. like in a library catalogue.

According to Reitz, a subject heading is “The most specific word or phrase that describes the subject, or one of the subjects, of a work, selected from a list of preferred terms (controlled vocabulary) and assigned as an added entry in the bibliographic record to serve as an access point in the library catalog. A subject heading may be subdivided by the addition of subheadings (example: Libraries--History--20th century) or include a parenthetical qualifier for semantic clarification, as in Mice (Computers).”

• SUBJECT HEADING LIST

Subject Heading List is the printed or published list of subject headings which may be produced from the subject authority file maintained by an organization or individual.

Subject heading list contains the preferred subject access terms (controlled vocabulary) that are assigned as an added entry in the bibliographic record which works as an access point and enables the work to be searched and retrieved by subject from the library catalog database. The controlled vocabulary identifies synonyms terms and selects one preferred term among them to be used as the subject heading. For homonyms, it explicitly identifies the multiple concepts expressed by that word or phrase. In short, vocabulary control helps in overcoming problems that occur due to natural language of the document’s subject. Hence, if vocabulary control is not exercised different indexers or the same indexer might use different terms for the same concept on different occasions for indexing the documents dealing with the same subject and also use a different set of terms for representing the same subject at the time of searching. This, in turn, would result in ‘mis-match’ and thus affect information retrieval. Cross-references are used with headings to direct the user from terms not used as headings to the term that is used, and from broader and related topics to the one chosen to represent a given subject.

Subject heading lists may have provision for the construction of pre-coordinated indexing strings including headings, plus rules for combining the single terms in strings and one or more levels of subheading. Based on these rules a subject heading may also be subdivided by the addition of form subdivisions, geographical subdivisions, chronological subdivisions, and topical subdivisions to add greater specificity.

TWO most popular subject heading lists are :

Sears List of Subject Headings (SLSH), and

Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)