Subject Cataloging

Presents suggested headings appropriate for use in the catalogs of small and medium-sized libraries, and provides patterns and instructions for adding new headings as they are required. The seventeenth edition features a revision of headings for the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere, as well as many new subdivisions.

Cataloging and Classification, Third Edition, is a text for beginning students and a tool for practicing cataloging personnel. All chapters have been rewritten in this latest edition to incorporate recent developments, particularly the tremendous impact metadata and the Web have had on cataloging and classification.

Libraries, archives, and museums hold a wide variety of moving images. all of which require the same level of attention to issues of organization and access as their print counterparts. Consequently, the people who create collection level records and metadata for these resources need to be equally conversant in the principles of cataloging. Martha Yee covers both descriptive (AACR2R, AMIM, and FIAF rules) and subject cataloging (with a focus on LCSH). In the process, the reader is encouraged to think critically and to be prepared to make decisions in ambiguous situations where solutions to problems are not always obvious or clearly dictated by specific rules.

Drawing on case studies shadowing the work of a dozen catalogers, Sauperl (library and information science and publishing, U. of Ljubljana, Slovenia) identifies the processes by which they interpret document topics, and distinguishes between subject cataloging and indexing. She concludes that the profession is a difficult one due to complex explicit and unwritten rules and practices. Even more daunting may be conveying to students the passion and values that such work encompasses. Taylor is with the School of Information Sciences at the U. of Pittsburgh, PA. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Here is an important critical review of current subject cataloging with suggested reforms and reports on actual innovations that have proven successful.

Document from the year 2016 in the subject Library Science, Information- / Documentation Science, , language: English, abstract: The concept of subject cataloguing appeared on the scene in the mid-nineteenth century. Before then, descriptive cataloging was the only library cataloging that was practiced. Libraries were much smaller than they are today, and scholarly librarians then were able, with the aid of printed bibliographies, to be familiar with everything available on a given subject and guide the users to it. With the rapid growth of knowledge in many fields in the course of the nineteenth century and the consequential increase in the volume of books and other library materials, it became desirable to do a preliminary subject analysis of such works and then to represent them in the catalogue in such a way that they would be retrievable by subject. This is subject cataloguing. The choice of subject headings is based on some key principles. In this paper, I look at the concept of subject cataloguing in relation to the principles that govern the choice of the descriptive terms or subject headings.