Subject Headings System Essay
Bronte Burnette, Katie Powell, Jordyn Zirk
The role of a subject heading system is to facilitate access to information; by going through the process of creating and modifying such a system revealed possible strengths of a syndectic structure, but also highlighted our system’s limitations. As we built our subject heading system for our user group, we were able to understand the intricacies that go into this type of system. A subject heading system has the natural ability “to distinguish and display the structural relationships between the terms it contains” (Aitchison, Gilchrist, Bawden, 2000, p.49). Subject headings help move users through content and create a relational web, which encourages discovery of ideas, concepts, and materials.
Benefits of a Subject Heading System for Searchability
A subject heading system allows users to navigate between headings through hierarchical relationships of knowledge with broader terms (BT) and narrower terms (NT). Also, the system facilitates associative relationships between hierarchies through related terms, and through subdivisions within a subject heading itself.
Overall, subject headings systems helps bring out the marrow of the book as well as the collection, elevating the reader’s understanding and interaction.
For instance, the subject heading system can:
- Distinguish and connect themes throughout a collection of books
- Apply multiple subject headings to complex material
- Add efficiency and eliminate irrelevant items
- Index books to certain headings even if the concept is not explicitly stated.
- For example, the books in our subject heading system do not use the term “feminism”, but as they displayed feminist themes and feminist scenes, they could be indexed under the heading “Feminism”
- Lead-in terms locate content through alternate keyword entry points and make connections between user-driven terminology and system design
- For example, we used “Underrepresented Occupation” as a lead-in term for “Non-traditional Career”, this choice was intended to create cohesive, user-centered language
The Process of Creating and Expanding a Subject Heading System
Entry Points
Because we privileged abstract concepts for subject headings, we included many scope notes and lead-in terms to encourage accessibility for users and facilitate future system expansion. For example, our use of the term “Intersectionality” required a scope note to explain how the term worked within the framework of our collection, specifically the intersection of race and gender.
Process/Design
One of the most important steps in our workflow was the visual mapping of each system, see Figure 1. This helped us see redundancies and islands within our own design, and allowed us to better understand the overall structure of an inherited system. When you only have a partial comprehension of the intention of a system, it can be challenging to know how to best build on existing decisions. This is apparent is larger systems like the Library of Congress Subject Headings, but is also true for smaller local systems.
In the case of our inherited system, mapping the relationships helped us see the strengths in the nuance of its subdivisions. Rather than trying to add additional BT or NT relationships, we supported the existing system and user group by expanding a new thematic branch of communication methods. From this new branch, we made associative relationships to the original structure.
Once we had distance from our own design, we also began to see the assumptions that we made. Other judgment errors were only apparent after receiving feedback. For example, by making “Empowerment Montage” a narrower term of “Female Empowerment”, we failed to create symmetry between genders (Bullard, 2019). As a whole, this process demonstrated how important it is to have a broad range of input and perspectives when creating or modifying a subject heading system, and the importance of documenting rationales to help those who come afterwards.
Adaptation and Expansion of an Inherited System
The inherited system was designed for sociologists researching how children’s books communicate norms/values/societal expectations. Before we integrated new subject headings and relationships into the system we needed to re-evaluate the structure, as it was a complete hierarchy branching out of the central heading “Norms”. We wanted to create related terms, so we decided to look at the ways in which these norms are communicated in the collection. We considered the issue of the subdivisions -met with laughter, -met with approval, etc. and the possible redundancies. Since our intention was to focus on the communication of norms and not the response, we do not feel this would be redundant as it adds to the full picture of norms/values within social networks. Including communication methods helps to amplify the stated physical transmission of norms and bridges output and response.
Perspective Changed Through Adaptation of Inherited System
While creating our subject heading system in part 1, we felt like we were forming a fully-functioning, completely realized, easy-to-use system. By adapting another group’s system, we still believe that our system works well, but we also realize that the system may not be as easy to use for non-creators. Having to integrate new subject headings and indexing into another group’s system without any guidance made us realize how much clarity is required to be able to adapt a system at random and begin to expand. “Any expert system is by definition a rule-based system,” so when creating a system to be utilized by other groups, it is imperative to explicitly express the rules of design (Dykstra, 1988, p.58). Subject headings may seem straightforward to the creators of the system, but to someone with a fresh perspective they may require more information such as a scope note to narrow down the intention.
Below are some examples of where further clarity was required:
- In the system we received for part 2, we were unsure how to interpret all of the layers of subdivision for each subject heading. For instance, every subject heading had a subdivision of “Exemplified Norm” and/or “Transgression”, and we were unable to discern when to index under those versus the subject heading alone.
- The scope notes in the second system were similar in their generality for each subject heading: “Use this heading for situations where a character, narration or another element of the story directly discusses ______ and related norms or cultural values. Subdivisions indicate situations where characters display _____ with potential reactions from other characters in the story.” Due to the lack of unique explanation, we were not able to garner much direction from those scope notes. So in order for us to start our steps for further implementation, the system required some editing.
- Our system could have used a scope note for “Gender Norms” to explain the specific instances of when this would be indexed. Seeing the nuanced way our inherited system addressed the concept of norms, we recognize the potential to further unpack this term in our own system.
References
Aitchison, J., Gilchrist, A., & Bawden, D. (2000). Section F: Structure and relationships. In Thesaurus Construction and Use: A Practical Manual (4th ed., pp. 49–83). New York: Europa Publications.
Bullard, J. (2019). Subject Headings and Thesauri [PowerPoint presentation]. Retrieved from UBC Canvas.
Dykstra, M. (1988). Can subject headings be saved? . Library Journal, 113(15), 55–58.