From Catalogablog:

LC has published Decision regarding the final disposition of LCSH headings for video recordings.  In summary, the decisions are:

• Topical headings (MARC tag 150) denoting a genre or form of video recording will be cancelled in favor of the correlated film headings;
• The heading Video mini-series will be revised to Film mini-series and the heading Television mini-series will be retained;
• The existing topical heading Interactive video will be made plural and a genre/form heading will be created; and,
• Genre/form headings for Internet videos, podcasts, and webisodes will be created.

 

 

Finally LC is reviewing the out-dated "Coookery" subject heading.  Deadline for comments is Dec. 1, 2009

Great article from a reference librarian perspective on how to use LSCH subdivision terms to refine keyword searches.

Facet-based interfaces demonstrate some limitations of Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), which were designed to deal with constraints that do not exist in the current computerized environment. This paper discusses some challenges for using LCSH for faceted browsing and navigation in library catalogs. Ideas are provided for improving results through system design, changes to LCSH practice, and LCSH structure.

Library and Archives Canada and OCLC announce that Canadian Subject Headings are now included as part of OCLC's Terminologies Service

"The Library of Congress has opened its ID.LOC.GOV web service, Authorities and Vocabularies, with the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) as the initial offering. The primary goal of this service is to enable machines to programmatically access data at the Library of Congress but the web interface also provides simple user access. We view this service as a step toward exposing and interconnecting vocabulary and thesaurus data via URLs. For LCSH, we are fortunate to have been able to link terms to a similar service provided in Europe for RAMEAU, a French subject heading vocabulary closely coordinated with LCSH.

We are very interested to get feedback on the uses and usefulness of the service to inform ways that we might enhance it. (There is a comment form at the site.). Over the next few months we will also be expanding it to other vocabularies commonly found in standards that the Library supports such as the Thesaurus of Graphic Materials, geographic area, language, and relator codes, and preservation events and roles. "

 

"The Cataloging Section of the National Library of Medicine® is pleased to announce a new e-learning course called Using Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) in Cataloging. It is available as a link from the Cataloging Section homepage. The course is a free set of modules and interactive exercises that students may take at their own pace without an instructor.

The course covers the use of MeSH in the cataloging environment and is divided into eight modules: Subject Analysis Principles, Introduction to Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and the MeSH Browser, Selecting the Main Concept, Use of Topical Subheadings in MeSH, Geographic Headings, Publication Types, Names as Subject, and Deconstructed Headings vs. Subject Strings."

 

"This site serves as a placeholder for forthcoming web services that will enable both humans and machines to programmatically access authority data at the Library of Congress. The initial services offered are influenced by -- and therefore implement -- the Linked Data movement's approach of exposing and inter-connecting data on the Web via dereferenceable URIs. We aim to make resources available on this site within 6-8 weeks. Check this site regularly for more updates as we continue to develop this service!
Scope

The scope of this web service is to provide access to commonly found standards and vocabularies promulgated by the Library of Congress. This includes data values and the controlled vocabularies that house them. The main application will provide resolvability to values and vocabularies by assigning URIs. Each vocabulary will possess a resolvable URI, as will each data value within it. "

 

Announcement on PCC list:

"The ALCTS-CCS Subject Analysis Committee Subcommittee on Genre/Form Implementation invites interested parties to join a listserv discussion on issues relating to LC genre/form (155) subject headings and their implementation in library catalogs. The subcommittee will facilitate the discussion, posing a different question every week. The discussion will begin later this month. If you are interested in participating, please go to http://lists.ala.org/sympa/info/form-genre and choose Subscribe."

John discusses his program to add LC subject headings to titles in the Online Books Page based on the LC classification

Link to:  Robert E. Wolverton, "Becoming an Authority on Authority Control: An Annotated Bibliography of Resources," Library Resources & Technical Services 50, no. 1 (2006):31-41.

Created by Lois Reibach, this blog will discuss news and trends in authority control, and new uses of authority data. Developments in controlled vocabularies will also be covered.

Lorcan describes OCLC's Terminology services:

"We have now made a set of controlled vocabularies available as web services for experiment. In effect, these services make a variety of subject vocabularies available as resources on the web in ways that individual vocabulary elements can be found, referenced and recombined in applications. They are 'webified'."

In 2006, the Director for Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access (ABA) at the Library of Congress (LC) requested the Cataloging Policy and Support Office to review of the pros and cons of pre- versus post-coordination of Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). The final report (2/19/08) recommended, and the ABA Management accepted, that LC catalogers continue to apply pre-coordination of LCSH terms.

...

The LC report documents the recommendations approved in June 2007, regarding further automation of the assignment of subject heading strings, the expansion of machine validation of strings, further simplification of practices including the fixed order of subdivisions, exploration into LC's use of the current generation of sophisticated search engines, the enabling of more social tagging additions to the LC records, and encouragement of Web applications that take advantage of LCSH. On this latter point, LC intends to make LCSH freely available on the Web in a SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization Schema) format for the world at large.

 

 

Beth's presentation at: Technical Services 2.0: Using Social Software for Collaboration, ALA June 2007

What Have We Got to Lose? The Effect of Controlled Vocabulary on Keyword Searching Results

Tina Gross and Arlene G.Taylor

"Facet-based interfaces demonstrate some limitations of Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), which were designed to deal with constraints that do not exist in the current computerized environment. This paper discusses some challenges for using LCSH for faceted browsing and navigation in library catalogs. Ideas are provided for improving results through system design, changes to LCSH practice, and LCSH structure."

John Ockerbloom's post on subejct headings, facets and his subject mapping project

"The goal of the terminologies services meeting was to determine which components of a terminologies service the participants (drawn from the RLG Programs partnership and representing a wide range of different communities and roles) find the most compelling. Desired meeting outcomes included a list of the most important features and use-cases in order to help prioritize efforts of RLG Programs and OCLC Research in this area of work."

"This project is building new tools for browsing and discovering library resources, using conceptual maps based on Library of Congress subject headings. The aim is to provide more effective subject-based discovery that takes maximum advantage of the investments libraries have made in subject cataloging."

A new interface to LCSH searching

"After clicking on any term, you get four links displayed: one does a Worldcat search, the second a Google Books search, then a search in LibraryThing and in OpenLibrary. The WorldCat and Google links have better chances for success."

Searching instructions for OCLC authority files

Apparently Google Book Search is now using subject headings that are LCSH (or derived from LCSH).   Hmmm... evidnece that even Google need additional metadata to make keyword searching work???

From catalogablog: 

Smith, Tiffany (2007) Cataloging and You: Measuring the Efficacy of a Folksonomy for Subject Analysis. In Lussky, Joan, Eds. Proceedings 18th Workshop of the American Society for Information Science and Technology Special Interest Group in Classification Research, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

LibraryThing's Tagmash pulls together books at the intersection of 2 tags (e.g. dog & humor). Something like LCSH strings created on the fly ;)

"My guess is that the folksonomy that emerges will not change the existing taxonomy because in a miscellaneous world you don't have" to change something in order to change it. The existing taxonomy could stay exactly as it is, as the folksonomy supplements it by providing synonyms for existing categories (e.g., a search for "recipes" takes you to the "cuisine" category of the existing taxonomy) and leaping-off-points from it into the user-created clusters of meaning (e.g., here's the tag cloud for the node you're browsing). Rather than disrupting, transforming or replacing the existing taxonomy, the folksonomy may just affectionately tousle its hair.

Guidelines on Subject Access to Individual Works of Fiction, Drama, Etc., 2nd edition, was published in 2000. The Guidelines constitute a recommendation for national standard practice in the provision of genre and subject access to individual works of fiction, drama, poetry, humor, and folklore in all formats.

The files can be downloaded from the GSAFD Site at Northwestern University. 

 

From the LibraryThing blog:  a brief comparison of tagging and subjects

Library of Congress Cataloging Distribution Service will begin to issue genre/form authority records (MARC 21 tag 155) no earlier than September 3, 2007

List announcement:

The ALCTS Cataloging and Classification Section Subject Analysis 
Committee would like to invite you to subscribe to the list 
http://lists.ala.org/wws/info/headings
to discuss the future of subject analysis.

The ALCTS Subject Analysis Committee established a new SAC 
Subcommittee on the Future of Subject Headings at ALA Annual 2006. Its charge:

"To analyze the future of subject cataloging, with emphasis on 
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), through the use of SWOT 
(Strengths,Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis, taking 
into consideration both internal forces within the library community 
and the external environment.  A preliminary report will be made at 
Midwinter 2008 with the final report and program made at Annual 2008."

Your participation in this discussion would be most welcome.

 

A project that John Mark Ockerbloom is currently working on--subject maps.

"This project is building new tools for browsing and discovering library resources, using conceptual maps based on Library of Congress subject headings. The aim is to provide more effective subject-based discovery that takes maximum advantage of the investments libraries have made in subject cataloging."

John has built the maps based on the explicit links in LCSH (i.e. references) and implicit relationships (e.g. terms related alphabetically)

Includes links to applications (live and demo) and a (very readable) white page describing the project.

An interesting interview with Barbara Tillett describes the process by which LSCH is changed, and responds to some of Sanford Berman's criticisms of LCSH.

Informal presentation by Mary Charles Lasater (Vanderbilt) on making SACO proposals based on MESH terms and other thesauri.   Since LCSH terms are generally based on literary warrant from print monographs, often new terminology will appear in journal articles first (particularly in the sciences).   Using these other sources increases interoperability between LCSH and other thesauri.

Main page for the FAST project; includes links to presentations

Searchable authority files of FAST headings

This issue (July 2006) of TechKnow includes a good summary of the FAST project:  

FAST: Faceted Application of Subject Terminology - A New Spin on an Old Standard / Ione T. Damasco, University of Dayton