Subject

I'm so glad this subject has come up!

I was thinking of questions to pose to this group, but maybe it would
work better to make some debatable statements (ya'll can agree or
disagree and expatiate)

1.  For subject access, keyword indexing of full text is not good enough.
2.  Subject keywords in metadata are better than nothing, but controlled
vocabulary is needed.
3.  Library of Congress subject headings are the only truly
comprehensive English language subject controlled vocabulary, but they
don't work well enough.
4.  A truly useful subject controlled vocabulary would support:
    a -- natural language searching
    b -- "exploding" hierarchical search (allow searching of all
"narrower terms" and their "narrower terms" under a topic)
    c -- expression of more complex relationships between topics
(relationship expressed by more than position in a string and "dash
dash").
    d -- much more extensive references - perhaps using "term clusters"
or some other means, to support easy links between "user vocabulary" and
an identified concept, so that a smart catalog could lead the user to
choose the concept they want for ambiguous terms (such as "records" with
the sound recordings meaning versus business records versus peak sports
performance) and bring them records on the subject they want, without
their having to "learn" the controlled vocabulary.
    e -- choice of preferred term for a particular catalog, (or perhaps
for a particular record?) without losing collocation and references.
    f -- automated or semi-automated subject assignment
    g - ?  (what else?)

What do we need?  (leave how to get it for later) and what's out there
that could be a model?  How could the ideal subject vocabulary work?

There!

Laura

--
*Laura Akerman
Technology and Metadata Librarian
Robert W. Woodruff Library, Room 128
Emory University
Atlanta, Ga. 30322
phone (404) 727-6888
fax 404-727-0053

*K.G. Schneider wrote:

>>And we also need subject headings.  Try a nice broad search in Google
>>Book Search (tm) to see what retrieval looks like without them.
>>
>>
>
>"We need some kind of subject headings" and "we need LCSH" are not one and

>the same. That's what I'm trying to get at. Going from LCSH to Google Book
>Search is a false dichotomy.
>
>Karen G. Schneider
>kgs_at_bluehighways.com
>
>



**