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Unit 13: Subject Cataloguing

been given first attention. And while study of these phases of cataloguing is not yet complete, the Notes
subject cataloguing process is beginning to receive its share of scrutiny.
To effect the improvement sought in subject cataloguing will require:
1. that we find out more about who uses the subject catalogue, for what purpose, and in what
way;
2. that we define the function of the subject catalogue in the light of this knowledge, and spell
out a code of practice to facilitate the construction of subject catalogues for all types and
sizes of libraries;
3. that we develop both standard and specialized lists of subject headings in accord with this
function and code; and
4. that we make use of our code and our lists to exploit the possibilities of cooperative catalogu-
ing in obtaining more complete and more effective subject control of library materials at less
cost. It is not likely that subject catalogs will disappear. For we are beginning again to
recognize, as Bishop did in 1906, that “Our aim as librarians is not merely to accumulate
books. It is to help the reader to the books he wants-or ought to want. In a large library the
only tool which accomplishes this result is the catalog, and of this the subject catalogue is
the part most difficult to make, most useful when well made.”

Self Assessment
Fill in the blanks:
1. The main objective of subject cataloguing is to fulfil the subject related needs of .................... .
2. The objective of .................... of subject heading is to keep the documents of a specific subject
under a uniform subject heading.
3. .................... has stated that “the primary purpose of the subject catalogue is to show which
books on a specific subject the library possesses”.

13.4 Chain Indexing-Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)

The Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) comprise a thesaurus (in the information
technology sense) of subject headings, maintained by the United States Library of Congress, for
use in bibliographic records. LC Subject Headings are an integral part of bibliographic control,
which is the function by which libraries collect, organize and disseminate documents. LCSHs are
applied to every item within a library's collection, and facilitate a user's access to items in the
catalogue that pertain to similar subject matter. If users could only locate items by 'title' or other
descriptive fields, such as 'author' or 'publisher', they would have to expend an enormous amount
of time searching for items of related subject matter, and undoubtedly miss locating many items
because of the ineffective and inefficient search capability.

An art and a science
Subject heading classification is a human and intellectual endeavour, where trained professionals
apply topic descriptions to items in their collections. Naturally, every library may choose to
categorize the subject matter of their items differently, without a uniform consentaneous standard.
The widespread use and acceptance of the Library of Congress Subject Headings facilitates the
uniform access and retrieval of items in any library in the world using the same search strategy
and LCSH thesaurus, if the correct headings have been applied to the item by the library. Thus,
LCSH decisions involve a great amount of debate and even controversy in the library community.
Despite LCSH's wide-ranging and comprehensive scope, there are libraries where the use of LCSH
is not ideal or effective. To deal with these types of collections and user communities, other subject

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