School of Information Management
& Systems. Spring 2004.
245 Organization of Information in Collections. M. Buckland.
Assignment
5: Subject access in the Pathfinder Catalog. Due Feb 25.
Read the hand-out on Subject
Access. Library subject headings are commonly composed of multiple elements
strung together.
Searching is a two stage process: First find the heading(s); then find the
records associated with the heading(s). The Pathfinder catalog (http://sunsite2.berkeley.edu:8000/)
provides a two-stage process with the BROWSE command to find the headings,
then by clicking on the link to get the associated records. More commonly
one uses the SEARCH command which goes through the subject headings to the
records without stopping to show you what they the headings were. To see the
subject headings you can either (i) Use BROWSE to
display headings, or (ii) Use a SEARCH lookup, esp. on title words,
then change the DISPLAY settings to also display Subject headings to see what
is there. (In this assignment use "Full Feature" search.)
The subject search commands:
In SEARCH:
Search for [your term] in su=Subject[phrase] looks for the exact wording as phrased:
the exact same words in the exact same order - and nothing else.
Typing in "war crimes" retrieves only records containing that
subject heading exactly, else so it retrieves WAR CRIMES but not,
say, WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL or TWENTY WAR CRIMES.
Search for [your term] in su:Subject[keyword]looks for any words, in any order.
Typing in "war crimes" retrieves all records
which contain any subject
heading containing either WAR or CRIMES or WAR CRIMES.
In
BROWSE:
Browse for [your term] in su=Subject[phrase] looks for the wording in exact order. Typing in
"war crimes" retrieves that subject heading exactly and nothing else
so it retrieves WAR CRIMES but not, say, WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL.
Browse for [your term] in su:Subject[keyword]looks for any words, in any order. Typing in "war crimes" retrieves any subject heading
containing either WAR or CRIMES or WAR CRIMES.
1. Suppose you wanted to search for books on the Blackfoot Native American
tribe.
1.1. Try SEARCH
BLACKFOOT in su=Subject[phrase]. How many records?
1.2. Try SEARCH
BLACKFOOT in su:Subject[keyword]. How many records?
1.3. Click on the titles of records 2 and 6 to see what they are
about. What are the "Blackfoot" subject headings?
1.4. For a
closer look at what is going on do BROWSE BLACKFOOT in su=Subject[phrase].. Then pick the most promising
subject heading for the Native American tribe.
1.5.
Click on the number on the right to retrieve the records.
So what is the best subject heading to use when searching for this tribe?
(Hint: Click on the titles of a few records and check the subject headings
to verify that your answer is correct.)
(If you want to know more look in the 1999 edition of the Library of Congress
Subject Headings, large red volumes in the Computer Lab.)
2. There have been lots of books about the Vietnam War in the past decade. So
it should be easy to find a general, overall account of it - not a just one
aspect of it - in the Pathfinder. Set Limit by: yr: Year "1994-2004"which limits
searches to only material published in the last ten years.
2.1. SEARCH "VIETNAM WAR" in su=Subject[phrase]. How many records are retrieved?
2.2. Now use BROWSE to check for the correct subject headings. Look for VIETNAM^M
WAR in su=Subject[phrase].
Is there another subject heading
describing the war? Find a record for a book about the war, click on the title
and look at the subject headings.
2.3. What is the subject heading used for the Vietnam War? Comments?
3. Let's look for the Hoopa Indians in the Pathfinder
CATalog.
3.1. Try SEARCH HOOPA INDIANS in ti=Title[phrase].
How many did you find?.
3.2. BROWSE HOOPA INDIANS in su=Subject[phrase]. How many did you find? Look
at some the records to see the subject headings.
3.3. What is the best subject heading for this tribe? Check your hunch by doing
a BROWSE su=Subject[phrase]search with it.
4. Any non-subject field may help, e.g. for material about the Iroquois, try
their language SEARCH iro in ln=Language[phrase]. Take a closer look at the second item
by clicking on the title to obtain a more detailed record, then
click on the MARC DISPLAY button (upper
right) to see the raw data. In which “field(s)”
(numbered row) can you find the language encoded?
5. Teaser: When old records on cards were copied into
electronic form, superseded forms
of subject heading were not usually updated and global conversion of obsolete
subject headings to newer headings missed some unorthodox headings
not in the massive red Library of Congress Subject Headings list,
including a few typos.
So Pathfinder not only has lots of books on the UNITED STATES and
on