Subject Headings and Subject Searching

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Subject Headings and Subject Searching

• LIB 120
• Amanda Izenstark

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Describing the subject of a book

• Say youre trying to describe what a book is
  about
• There might be a variety of words that could
  describe it.

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Describing the subject of a book

• A book about black labs might be described as a
  book about
• Black Labs
• Labrador Retrievers
• Sporting Dogs
• Dogs
• Canines
• Animals

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Describing the subject of a book

• To make it easier to find books on a topic, only
  one term will be picked to describe all the books
  about black labs Labrador Retrievers.
• A book cant be given any subject, it needs to be
  a consistent one so that people can find all the
  books on a topic in one place.

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What the heck is a Subject Heading?

• A subject heading is
• Also known as a controlled vocabulary because

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What the heck is a Subject Heading?

• Of many possible synonyms that could be used to
  describe the subject of a book, only one term or
  phrase is selected as the formal subject heading.

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Subject Searching in HELIN

• Searching by subject in HELIN isnt as
  straight-forward as it sounds.
• When you do a subject search in HELIN, you can
  ONLY search by Library of Congress Subject
  Headings (LCSH) and Medical Subject Headings
  (MeSH).

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Subject Searching in HELIN

• The Subject Search ONLY searches the subject
  field -- those highlighted links BELOW the call
  number.
• You need to have the exact wording of a subject
  to get accurate results.

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Subject Searching in HELIN

• Searching for Cooking wont get you books about
  cooking, because the subject is really (any
  guesses?)

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Uh, what?

• Its best to find the subject headings for your
  topic, THEN do a subject search.
• Subject headings group all the books on a topic
  together in one place.
• Subject searching is the fastest way to find
  relevant books.

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How to find the best Subject Headings

• Use the Classification Web (Library of Congress)
  search tool
• Do a WORD or KEYWORD search, and look for likely
  candidates
• Look in the Library of Congress Subject Headings
  (LCSH) books

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How to use the Classification Web

• Think of the Classification Web as a thesaurus or
  phone book for subjects that you can use for the
  subject search in HELIN.
• The Classification Web is available on the
  Librarys General and Reference Database page.
• If you looked in the Yellow Pages for Doctors,
  heres what youd find

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How to use the Classification Web

• ?Doctors
• See Chiropractic Physicians (D.C.)
  Dentists Naturopathic Physicians -N.D.
  Optometrists (O.D.) Physicians Surgeons
  M.D. D.O. Physicians Surgeons-Podiatry-D.P.
  M. Psychologists Veterinarians

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How to use the Classification Web

• The Classification Web works the same way. Do a
  keyword search for your subject, and look at the
  entries below.
• You may see a list of subjects that look good or
  you may see a reference that says
• USE Cookery

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How to use the Classification Web

• You may also see the following abbreviations
• SA -
• UF -
• BT -
• NT -
• RT -

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Using the Classification Web

• There may be more than one appropriate and
  relevant subject heading for your topic.
• Think of some synonyms for your topic
• And then look those up, too

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Tags Uncontrolled Subject Headings

• Tags used to describe the contents of a blog
  post, are doing something similar to what Subject
  Headings do classify and organize information.
• The problem is that tags are not uniform, so one
  persons tag might not be anothers.

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Word/Keyword vs. Subject Searching

• A Word or Keyword search finds your terms in the
  Author, Title, Subject, etc. parts of the record.
• A Subject search finds your terms in the Subject
  field only.
• This is more likely to produce relevant results!

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So, how do I do all this?