Page 187 - DLIS402_INFORMATION_ANALYSIS_AND_REPACKAGING

Information Analysis and Repackaging

Notes COMPASS (Computer Aided Subject System)

PRECIS was intended to be a complete subject statement in a form suitable for a printed bibliography,
and this was not necessarily the best format for online searching. Its complex system of coding and
role operators served to produce the output strings for printing which appear to be unnecessary in
an online system. It did not appear to make any difference whether a concept is coded with the role
operator (1) or (2). Place name was treated in several ways with the role operators (O), (1), (5) and
occasionally (3) as part of the subject string. The use of role operators in such a manner was not of
much help for online searching. In 1990, it was decided to revise UKMARK and to replace PRECIS by
a more simplified system of subject indexing in order to reduce the unit cost of cataloguing of the
British Library. As a result Computer Aided Subject System (COMPASS) was introduced for BNB
in 1991 and PRECIS was dropped.
COMPASS is a simplified restructuring of PRECIS. The index string is organised by the PRECIS
principles of context dependency and role operators. In order to minimize the complexity of PRECIS
role operators, primary role operators (O), (4), (5) and (6) are not used. Dates as difference (coded
with $d) are not used in all cases like PRECIS. The indexer who writes the COMPASS input string
also assigns the appropriate DDC number in the field 082 of the worksheet meant for BNB. The
initial step of subject analysis is done only once while preparing the COMPASS input string for a
document and this input string is taken as the basis for all latter decisions relating document, and
their incorporation in the relevant fields of the worksheet.
DDC number is also used as a source of feature heading. Prior to the introduction of COMPASS,
the PRECIS strings were used to generate the DDC numbers and also the feature headings for the
BNB classified sequence. The methods associated with the generation of COMPASS index entries
are same as that of PRECIS index entries. The index entry drawn according to COMPASS appears
in italics at the end of the entry for bibliographic record of a document in the classified/main part
of the BNB. DDC numbers are now directly linked to the bibliographic records rather than through
the subject strings. The subject index of BNB refers to a class number in the following manner:

Library Operations

Classification compared with indexing 025
In the classified part of BNB a number of entries or bibliographic records have been arranged under
the class number 025. The above mentioned subject under directs the user to scan the entries under
the class number 025 in the classified/main part of BNB in order to find out the one which has at the
end the subject heading “classification compared with indexing”.
Merits and Deficiencies
With the introduction of COMPASS, the printed subject index of BNB appears to be much more
shorter than the earlier one codes and role operators used in COMPASS are very simple in
comparison to PRECIS.

COMPASS is used not only for the generation of printed indexes for BNB, it is
also amenable for online searching.

For generating feature headings in the BNB classified sequence, up to five levels of headings from
the DDC numbers are given. The aforesaid system of producing feature heading has been reported
to be unsatisfactory from the users’ point of view. Feature headings constructed from the terms in
PRECIS string prior to the introduction of COMPASS was appeared to be more user-friendly.

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