Beyond the Subject: Non-Topical Facets for Exploration and Discovery

Authors

  • Kelley McGrath

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7710/1093-7374.1970

Keywords:

Oregon librarians, Oregon libraries, Oregon Library Association, Oregon Library Association Quarterly, Pacific Northwest libraries, PNW libraries, library jobs, library careers, librarian, librarians, cataloger, cataloging, metadata, data, migration, ILS, integrated library system, organization, future organization of things, technical services, training, cataloging training, Reed College, Washington County Cooperative Library Services, WCCLS, discovery layer, BiblioCommons, Pacific University, library automation, automation, Warrenton Community Library, Seaside Public Library, ArchivesSpace, Hillsboro Public Library, design thinking, library processing, Eureka! Project, 5 Whys, Lean, archive, archives, archival, scholarly, OER, open electronic resources, Linn-Benton Community College, Mt. Hood Community College, LBCC, MHCC, facets, faceted vocabulary, faceting, faceted searching, faceted search, University of Oregon, Alma, Cedar Mills & Bethany Community Libraries, future of cataloging, cataloging trends, fu

Abstract

New developments in the cataloging world can help libraries better answer questions like: What music do you have for string quartets? What young adult fiction do you have by African American male authors? Do you have any diaries written by pioneer women in Oregon in the late nineteenth century? Do you have any recent movies from China?

Historically, the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) have included terms both for what something is about (topic) and for what something is (genre or form). Many users are looking for something either as a topic, or as a genre or form, and not for the two things mixed together. Sometimes LCSH makes a clear, albeit not intuitive, distinction. Starting in 2007, the Library of Congress (LC) began work on a new vocabulary, now known as Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms for Library and Archival Materials (LCGFT), to use for genre and form instead of LCSH. In addition, they created two additional new vocabularies: Library of Congress Medium of Performance Thesaurus for Music (LCMPT) for instruments and voices and Library of Congress Demographic Group Terms (LCDGT) for audiences and creators. This article investigates the application and results of using these new, faceted vocabularies.

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Author Biography

Kelley McGrath

Kelley McGrath is Metadata Management Librarian at the University of Oregon. She is an experienced media cataloger and an active member of Online Audiovisual Catalogers (OLAC). She has a longstanding interest in the potential of faceted navigation in library catalogs. She is particularly interested in ways to make library metadata more useful for humans and machines and ways to design discovery interfaces to make better use of library metadata.

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Published

2019-08-14

How to Cite

McGrath, K. (2019). Beyond the Subject: Non-Topical Facets for Exploration and Discovery. OLA Quarterly, 25(1), 9–16. https://doi.org/10.7710/1093-7374.1970