College and Research Libraries


The Reliability Factor in 
Subject Access 

Constance McCarthy 
For truly effective subject access, it is essential that books on any given topic be brought to-
gether consistently under the same subject heading. With the advent of online catalogs, this 
goal has assumed new importance but has also become easier to achieve. 

s the library ·community has 
gained exper~ence with online 
catalogs, subJect access has as-
sumed new importance as a 

topic of discussion. Experts from several 
constituencies within librarianship are 
bringing their skills and experiences to 
bear on an old problem in a new setting. 

The old problem is that of creating the 
best subject indexing for a large collection 
of items that is never static. New consider-
ations arising with online capabilities in-
clude the possibility of overcoming some 
of the limitations formerly imposed by the 
presentation of the catalog on cards as 
well as the desire to take advantage of any 
other improvements to subject access that 
computers might make possible. There-
cent series of articles in American Libraries 
by Pauline Cochrane, to which many oth-
ers contributed, served well to delineate 
the present range of opinions within the 
profession. 1 Carol Mandel and Judith 
Herschman, in an article on possible ways 
of improving subject access in online cata-
logs, provide a review of the literature up 
to February 1983. 2 

For the most part, the issues being de-
bated thus far concern the online catalog 
itself and the features it has or might have; 
the adequacy of the Library of Congress Sub-
ject Headings as a thesaurus for the online 
catalog; and the possible enhancement of 
the catalog record by adding more subject 
headings or key words from tables of con-

tents or elsewhere. An issue that has not 
been addressed in this context, as far as I 
can discover, is that of uniformity or con-
sistency in the application of subject head-
ings (as distinct from consistency among 
headings, the lack of which produces such 
often-noted pitfalls as French Literature, 
but Philosophy, French). 3 To avoid confu-
sion, I have given the name ''reliability'' 
(a less-than-ideal term) to this particular 
kind of consistency. 

Before discussing this matter further, it 
may be useful to consider briefly the pur-
pose of subject headings or descriptors 
and the ways in which a search based on 
their use differs from one using free text or 
key words. The purpose of subject head-
ings is to make it possible to find all docu-
ments about the same subject by consult-
ing the same term. The key concept in this 
oversimplified definition is of course all. 
Enthusiasts describing free-text searching 
invariably give examples of the many use-
ful documents retrieved; they seem not to 
realize that-for all they know-the most 
useful documents may have eluded them. 
Controlled subject heading structure 
serves the same purpose as its counter-
part, name authority control; they each 
make possible a comprehensive search. 

As another prefatory note, I want to ex-
plain that I am a reference librarian. My 
viewpoint on subject headings is that of a 
consumer, not a producer; my ideas have 
been arrived at through my experience in 

Constance McCarthy is assistant head of the reference department at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illi-
nois 60201. She wishes to acknowledge the assistance of Janet Swan Hill, head, cataloging department, and Brian 
Nielson, head, reference department, both at Northwestern University Library, who read and commented on this 
paper. 

48 



assisting library users in their subject 
searches as well as through my own indi-
vidual experience. 

The aspect of subject access I wish to dis-
cuss is the reliability of the choices made 
by catalogers when assigning subject 
headings. Regardless of the merits of the 
subject term itself, can we find grouped 
under it all the books on the subject it 
identifies? Or will some catalogers have 
chosen other headings? Trade-unions 
may not be an idiomatic term for contem-
porary Americans, but reliability will be 
served if all the books on labor unions are 
given that subject heading and not dis-
persed under, say, Labor and Laboring 
Classes or Industrial Relations. I have 
chosen to use the term ''reliability'' for 
this concept, because the other terms used 
by catalogers who discuss it have become 
so identified with other topics that they 
might be misleading. It has, of course, 
nothing to do with the form of the catalog; 
however, I believe that in the online envi-
ronment it has an even greater importance 
than in the card catalog. Further, online 
catalogs have certain features that should 
make reliability easier to achieve. 

By reliability then, I mean simply the ba-
sic goal of bringing all books on the same 
topic together under the same subject 
heading. A. C. Foskett, speaking of "con-
sistency,'' says it means that once the user 
"has found out how a subject has been in-
dexed, he will find all similar documents, 
which will presumably also be relevant, 
indexed in the same way. ''4 Lois Chan, 
who refers to ''uniform heading,'' says ''a 
true subject entry lists all works on the 
same subject together regardless of the au-
thors' choice of terminology." 5 David 
Haykin, using the term "unity," says "a 
subject catalog must bring together under 
one heading all the books which deal prin-
cipally or exclusively with the subject, 
whatever the terms applied to it by the au-
thors of the books and whatever the vary-
ing terms applied to it at different times. ''6 

In the present context, the problem is 
not, usually, that the authors' terminol-
ogy has misled the subject cataloger. 
Rather, it may be a national cataloging pol-
icy that places undue emphasis on speci-
ficity and on finding an exact match for the 

The Reliability Factor 49 

scope of the entire book, whatever the cost 
in dispersal of books among many head-
ings. Or, it may be the presumably con-
stant increase in the complexity of topics 
that appear in the literature. Certainly the 
problem has been exacerbated by a policy 
of restricting the number of subject head-
ings used. This restriction was presum-
ably necessary because of problems re-
lated to the amount of space in the card 
catalogs. Another factor is undoubtedly 
that subject catalogers at the Library of 
Congress, although they are working with 
an online catalog, do not have easy and 
immediate access to a consolidated list of 
all established subject headings, including 
those most recently formulated. 

Whatever the reasons, books in many 
subject areas are simply not reliably 
brought together by our present catalogs. 
If the subject of a book can be encom-
passed in a proper name, then that book 
will be handsomely treated by the subject 
catalogers at the Library of Congress, and 
it is almost certain to find its place with 
other books on the same person, place, or 
corporate entity. If it is about a chemical 
compound, a single identifiable literary 
genre, a historical period, or any of many 
other definite and discrete concepts, it will 
fare nearly as well. But books devoted to 
less indisputably definable topics, or to 
subjects too new to be familiar, seem to 
stand a poor chance of ending up together 
with others on the same topic under the 
same subject heading. 

One of 'the very few places where this 
situation has been discussed is in John M. 
Christ's book on the lack of correspon-
dence between the terminology of the so-
cial sciences and library subject headings. 
In describing the large number of different 
subject headings assigned to books on the 
sociological topics "role" and "culture," 
he points out that ''there appears to be a 
high degree of dispersion in the variety of 
subject headings assigned by the Library 
of Congress. " 7 For 109 bibliographical en-
tries in his study, on six different subjects, 
188 subject headings (fewer than two per 
title) were assigned, of which 121 were dif-
ferent! 

But it's not that the problem concepts 
are all as arguably amorphous as those 



50 College & Research Libraries 

studied by Christ. Last year, for example, 
the reference collection at Northwestern 
University Library had five different direc-
tories of online databases. Among them 
they had eight different subject headings, 
but no subject heading was common to all 
five. This would have been less of a prob-
lem if they had not used, among them, 
five different Dewey classification num-
bers. Imagine the reference librarian who 
is looking for any one of them without be-
ing able to remember the title or the au-
thor's name. And. then imagine a library 
user hoping to find information from such 
a directory, and trying to select the best 
one from the library's holdings! 

There was nothing wrong with any of 
these subject headings and, to some ex-
tent, they reflected differences in content. 8 

But any library user would have expected 
to find all five directories under the same 
subject heading. I use the past tense be-
cause the Catalog Department at North-
western, freed from the burden of card fil-
ing and maintenance, has been willing to 
provide us with additional headings for 
some titles when we call serious inadequa-
cies to their attention. This was an in-
stance where we requested, and got, the 
same two subject headings applied to each 
of the directories. As grateful as we are for 
these interventions on our behalf, it is too 
time-consuming a procedure in both de-

. partments for us to resort to it often. And 
if every reference department trying to 
keep track of its directories of online data-
bases were to follow the same path, the ex-
penditure of time would be truly monu-
mental. 

What catalogers and others having in-
frequent contact with the public may not 
fully realize is the extent to which users 
depend on the catalog to use the same 
heading consistently for books on the 
same subject. Users may find some of our 
terminology to be peculiar, but once they 
have found a subject heading that pro-
duces some books on their topic they nor-
mally assume that all the books in the li-
brary on that . tor,ic will have that same 
subject heading. I talk to users every day 
who are having problems with subject 
searching. I would not attempt to general-
ize about their problems (terms too broad, 
too narrow, unfiltered through LCSH), 

January 1986 

but one thing they all have in common is 
their complete faith in the total reliability 
of the library's subject headings. 

My concern about reliability arises pri-
marily from my experience as a reference 
librarian using subject headings both to lo-
cate reference books and to assist users in 
their subject searches. The examples I use 
here all concern reference books, but sub-
ject access to the general collection is not, I 
think, dissimilar in any significant re-
spect. It seems to me that the experience of 
reference librarians has value at a time 
when we are considering changes in the 
way our subject catalogs are created. We 
are sometimes referred to as "sophisti-
cated" or "skilled" catalog users, but we 
could also be called "stubborn" catalog 
users. I believe that one of the chief differ-
ences between a librarian and a naive cata-
log user is that the librarian is likely to be 
looking for something that he or she 
knows, or is nearly certain, must be in the 
catalog, whereas the user is far more likely 
to give up a search, assuming that there is 
nothing available on the topic or that 
everything available has been found-
thus the most relevant or most basic titles 
may remain undiscovered. I believe it is 
now the responsibility of reference librari-
ans to become articulate, as well as stub-
born, catalog users, and to participate in 
the discussion of online subject catalogs 
more actively than they have. It is to this 
end, and not with any wish to carp about 
the generally good subject cataloging pro-
vided by the Library of Congress, that I 
record these instances of professional user 
frustration . 

Take, for example, The Book of American 
City Rankings, by John Tepper Marlin 
(New York: Facts On File, 1983). Where 
would you expect to find this book, which 
ranks cities on everything from books 
loaned per capita by public libraries to 
homicides as a percentage of all deaths? 
Certainly not an easy book to categorize, 
and perhaps the single subject heading 
Cities and Towns-United States-
Handbooks, Manuals, etc. is not too bad. 
At least, it wouldn't be too bad if you 
hadn't become accustomed to finding 
Places Rated Almanac by Richard Boyer and 
David Savageau (Chicago: Rand McNally, 
1981) under a subject heading that well de-



scribes the content of both books: Quality 
of life-United States-Statistics or under 
one of its other subject headings: Social 
Indicators-United States or Cities and 
Towns-United States-Statistics. How-
ever, the Book of American Rankings by 
ClarkS. Judge (New York: Facts On File, 
1979), which ranks the states in the same 
way that the Marlin book ranks cities, has 
only United States-Statistics as a subject 
heading, which might have led you to rely 
on Statistics as a subdivision of place 
when looking for similar books in the fu-
ture. The first edition of the Book of World 
Rankings by George T. Kurian (New York: 
Facts On File, 1979), on the other hand, 
had only Social Indicators as a heading. 
The new edition, The New Book of World 
Rankings (1984), however, has Statistics, 
Economic Indicators, and (hurrah!) Qual-
ity of Life-Statistics as well. But wait! A 
new edition (1985) of Places Rated Almanac 
has appeared, and this time it has four 
subject headings instead of three! But, 
alas, Quality of Life is no longer among 
them, although the other two headings 
from the 1981 edition have been retained, 
and two new headings, United States-
Statistics and Almanacs, American have 
been added. 

Presumably the subject catalogers of 
these books didn't search for other works 
on the same topic before choosing a sub-
ject heading. But then, it is also unlikely 
that they will ever be trying to find any of 
them in the future to answer a reference 
question or to satisfy a client who knows 
of the existence of these books and expects 
to find them, if not under the same head-
ings, at least under headings that are con-
sistent with one another. Users of many 
online catalogs get subject tracings with 
each catalog entry they see. It should at 
least be possible for them, knowing of the 
existence of any one of these books on 
rankings of places, to enter its author or ti-
tle into the online catalog and get a display 
of subject tracings that would produce all 
of the others. And when they have located 
a book through the use of a subject head-
ing, their reasonable assumption that all 
other editions of that book have been 
found also, having been given the same 
subject heading, should not prove wrong. 

An example of a different kind of prob-

The Reliability Factor 51 

lemisAmerica's Working-class Women: A His-
torical Bibliography by Susan Estabrook 
Kennedy (New York: Garland, 1981). The 
only subject heading assigned to this book 
by the Library of Congress was Working-
class women-United States-History-
Bibliography. This was the first time 
Working-class Women, a newly estab-
lished heading, had appeared in our refer-
ence department subject catalog. If we 
were looking for bibliographical informa-
tion about the history of women at work, 
which is the predominant element in this 
book, our experience and instincts would 
tell us to look under Women-Employ-
ment or a similar heading (for a secondary 
element, the heading Labor and Laboring 
Classes might come to mind); we would 
not think of Working-class Women. The 
correctness of the heading assigned, which 
is without doubt the best single heading for 
the book, is not in question here-and of 
course we could have found the heading. 
To do so we could have gone to the 1981 
supplement of LSCH and found a see also 
reference under Women (not, of course, 
Women-Employment). How likely 
would we be to do that? The answer is sim-
ple: we would never do that-first, because 
it would take too much time, given that we 
would be searching without any real con-
viction of need (isn't Women-
Employment, a heading under which we 
would already have found other, related, 
titles, good enough?), and secondly, be-
cause we would have many other avenues 
of approach to the topic, through indexes, 
bibliographies, and sometimes, proximity 
of classification number. Being unaware of 
the existence of the idea! bibliography for 
our needs, we would not feel deprived by 
its absence. 

-. One of the very few advantages of a card 
catalog over an online catalog is that head-
ings and guide cards that are several 
inches away and even more distant labels 
of drawers are all within the field of vision 
of a user looking at a single heading. With 
a computer catalog, even if there is an in-
dex or thesaurus of terms, only a single 
screen of data can be seen at once. This 
means that there may be less awareness of 
the extent of the subdivisions in a file or 
even of headings that vary only slightly 
from those being viewed. This limited 



52 College & ·Research Libraries 

view imposed by the terminal screen be-
stows added importance on each heading, 
as alphabetically related terms are less 
likely to be seen. 

LUIS, our online computer catalog at 
Northwestern, has as yet no subject cross-
references. But let us assume for a mo-
ment that we do have up-to-date online 
subject authority records incorporated 
into the online catalog. Would reference li-
brarians and users, having once found 
Women-Employment in our subject 
guide screen, go back several screens to 
look at the cross-references under 
Women? Probably not. What we may 
need is a more generous allotment of see 
also from or broader term headings referring 
to Working-class Women. In addition to 
Women, Labor and Laboring Classes, 
and Social Classes, the xx references in 
LCSH, we might do well to have Women-
Employment, Women-Social Condi-
tions, and perhaps others. It has been sug-
gested that cross-references-including 
broader, narrower, and related terms-be 
displayed on the screen automatically 
whenever the user requests a subject 
term. Another solution in this case would 
be simply the more generous assignment 
of subject headings. The bibliography un-
der consideration contains more informa-
tion on Women-Employment than do 
some others devoted entirely to that topic; 
why may it not have a subject heading 
bringing out that aspect of its contents? 

Another instance in which the cataloger 
has presumably tried to choose the best 
single heading for a book is the World Press 
Encyclopedia edited by George T. Kurian 
(New York: Facts On File, 1982). The only 
subject heading given to this two-volume 
work was Government and the Press-
Handbooks, Manuals, etc. Certainly 
much of the information contained in this 
comprehensive nation-by-nation survey 
of the press in 180 countries relates to the 
relationship between news media and 
governments. However, it is also ·the best 
available single source on the characteris-
tics and history of the world's press. Why 
should we hide it away from library users 
hoping to find this kind of information un-
der such a heading as Press, Journalism or 
even Newspapers? Why is there a ten-

January 1986 

dency to ration subject headings for large, 
important books useful to many, while 
squanderinf them on tiny or special inter-
est works?1 

Some other instances of subject heading 
inconsistency that have caused problems 
for Northwestern reference librarians con-
cern certain frequently used directories. 
We have found that we cannot rely on 
finding consistent subject headings for di-
rectories of colleges and universities, of 
graduate programs, of academic scholars 
and university faculty members, or of au-
thors' guides to publishing in various 
fields. These instances come readily to 
mind because they are the titles of hand-
lists we have produced for our own use 
and to give to students looking for this 
kind of information; we could probably 
use many more such lists if we had the 
time to compile them. In the case of direc-
tories of graduate education, for example, 
many directories have a subject heading 
following this pattern: Sociology-Study 
and Teaching (Higher)-United States. 
Others, however, omit (Higher) or add 
Directories or omit United States, until 
there is no way of predicting just what the 
subject heading will be. 11 The problems 
with the other directories mentioned are 
similar. 

To summarize the difficulties discussed 
in the preceding examples: 

1. Different terms may be chosen by 
subject catalogers for books dealing with 
the same topic, as with the online directo-
ries and the books about ranking of places. 
Presumably this is particularly a danger 
with new topics. 

2. The level of specificity may be such as 
to divide a book from others on closely re-
lated topics, as exemplified by our bibliog-
raphy on working-class women. Presum-
ably this is also a hazard especially 
characteristic of areas of expanding schol-
arship. 

3. Not enough headings are assigned to 
bring out the contents of the book. This 
was the case with The World Press Encyclo-
pedia and also with America's Working-class 
Women. 

4. As with the directories for graduate 
education, subdivisions may have been 
applied to different levels of specificity. 



5. Cross-references, as with Working-
class Women, are made too sparingly, and 
at too high a subdivision level. 

Now let us consider possible solutions 
to the difficulties-ways of insuring to the 
best of our limited ability that materials on 
the same subjects may be located under 
the same subject headings. Many would 
immediately mention keyword access, 
free-text searching, and Boolean logic as 
the best hope for overcoming some of the 
limitations of our catalogs. For the bibliog-
raphy on working-class women, we need 
only have entered the word women, the 
word work, truncated, and the word bibli-
ography. True, we would have retrieved 
that bibliography, but we would have 
missed others in our reference collection 
whose titles do not include work or women. 
To get all of them, we would need consid-
erable skill in searching and-the greatest 
flaw-we could never be sure that we had 
all of them, or (what we really want) all the 
best of them. This situation would be alle-
viated somewhat by enrichment of the 
records with phrases from the table of con-
tents or index, but it could never com-
pletely be overcome by such means. Per-
haps the most important function of 
subject cataloging, with the human intelli-
gence and forethought it entails, is to try 
to make possible a true comprehensive 
search of the database to which it provides 
an index. A glance at the other examples 
will show that even greater difficulties 
would attend an attempt to retrieve them 
with certainty through free-text search-
ing. Keyword searching, although of the 
greatest usefulness for narrowing a search 
when too many books have been retrieved 
or in locating materials for which existing 
subject headings are inadequate or insuffi-
ciently current, will never solve the reli-
ability problem for us; in fact, it is very 
nearly the antithesis of reliability! In any 
case, before counting too much on our us-
ers' abilities as online searchers, we need 
to do more study of transaction tapes from 
online catalogs and of reports from librari-
ans working with end users. 12 

Other, more pedestrian approaches 
show more promise. The simplest-and 
perhaps the best-would be to encourage 
subject catalogers to provide more subject 

The Reliability Factor 53 

headings for most books. (The average 
number at present has been calculated by 
different studies at between 1.4 and 1.9 
headings per book.) This approach, which 
has been advocated by many, would 
greatly improve a user's chances of find-

, ing materials. 13 Surely libraries using card 
catalogs and worrying about space limita-
tions could simply refrain from using all 
the headings? If necessary, perhaps LC 
could designate an optional break-off 
point, as they do with Dewey numbers. 

In the same vein, a loosening of the pro-
hibition against assigning headings that . 
represent less than the entire book would 
be helpful. Not that the catalog should 
try-at least not at this point in its 
history-to take on the functions of in-
dexes and bibliographies, but when a sub-
stantial component of a book can be 
bought out by additional subject head-
ings, it should be done. 

Other promising approaches involve 
the cross-reference structure. First, we 
should make it a top priority to start using 
the cross-references we already have. "To 
paraphrase a famous quotation, except in 
the LC Public Catalog, the Library of Con-
gress subject heading system has not been 
tried and found wanting; it has never been 
tried. " 14 Most large libraries long ago gave 
up maintaining an adequate see also struc-
ture in their card catalogs, at what expense 
to users it is painful to imagine. The expe-
rience at Northwestern, unlike that re-
ported by some other libraries, was that 
the advent of the online subject catalog 
caused users to turn to LCSH with aston-
ishing diligence. We have bought several 
additional sets, many of which have had 
to be rebound. But compared to having 
the cross-references in the catalog where 
they belong, and recorded in an easily un-
derstood format, this is a mere makeshift. 

Next, we can improve the entry vocabu-
lary. 15 There is no need to use synony-
mous subject headings, as some have sug-
gested, to try to match our users' 
vocabularies; but in the computer catalog 
we could increase the number of see refer-
ences almost without limit and greatly im-
prove the usefulness of the catalog to the 
public. 

To achieve reliability, however, it is the 



54 College &t Research Libraries 

see also references directing users to 
broader, narrower, and related terms that 
are of greater significance. The new cata-
loging rules for see also references recentl~ 
implemented by the Library of Congress 6 

should, in time, make LCSH equivalent to 
a thesaurus, with better logic and a greatly 
improved system for assisting users to 

. move up and down the ladder of specific-
ity. This encourages us to speculate about 
the possibility of manipulating the subject 
authority files in ways that would be pre-
dictable and easy. One of the worst ene-
mies of reliability is the tendency of the 
user to approach the catalog on a different 
level of specificity from that of the subject 
cataloger or the existing literature. 17 What 
if LC' s new rules eventually enabled us to 
approach their subject headings as we do 
the tree structures in MESH (the National 
Library of Medicine's Medical Subject Head-
ings), exploding the online search into a 
more general subject heading or an array 
of related terms when too little is found 
under a narrow heading? If that is too vi-
sionary, we should at least be able to over-
ride subject subdivisions at will, produc-
ing a broader result. In years past, as a 
matter of policy, some types of subject 
heading files were subdivided only when 
they reached unmanageable proportions. 
However, it was not normally considered 
possible to go back and add subdivisions, 
where appropriate, to the previously cata-
loged titles. This policy itself thus pro-
duced a great deal of ''unreliability'' and 
confusion. In recognition of this problem, 
each term is now more likely to be subdi-
vided as minutely as possible to allow for 
infinite expansion, a policy that often 
results in the separation of titles users 
would hope to find together. At this junc-
ture, it should be possible for the user to 
elect the use of a broader heading. In any 
case, now that it is possible to use Boolean 
logic and other searching techniques in 
online catalogs, the terror of the long file 
should soon be alleviated. The user who 
does not want everything on a particular 
topic can limit by date or combine the 
heavily used term with one or more free-
text words. 

But what can be done about the most se-
rious of the impediments to reliability-

January 1986 

the catalogers' choice of different terms 
for books on the same topic? Manipulation 
of cross-references alone will not solve 
this problem. The only solution, it seems 
to me, would be for catalogers to examine 
the literature on the topic under consider-
ation to see what subject headings have 
been used in the past. This would involve 
not only checking to see how a particular 
subject heading has been used but would 
also sometimes necessitate the use of bibli-
ographies, indexes, or online searches to 
locate books on the topic by means other 
than the Library of Congress subject head-
ings. (Perhaps this is sometimes done 
now, but I assume that it is not common 
practice.) The books so located could then 
be examined for similarity of subject mat-
ter and the subject headings brought into 
alignment either by matching the new 
book to the old or by adding headings to 
the old books. This would, of course, be 
time-consuming and expensive, but the 
improvement in the quality of subject cat-
aloging would be invaluable. Also, or at 
least so Robert Holley and Robert Killhef-
fer maintain, such efforts are fully justifi-
able if one considers the attention ex-
pended on name authority work, despite 
the fact that the chances of the same name 
bein~ used more than once are only one in 
four. 8 

The other suggestion I have is that sub-
ject catalogers try to think more of the cat-
alog as a whole-how its headings interact 
together-and somewhat less, perhaps, 
about finding the ideal subject heading for 
each book. According to Janet Swan Hill, 
head of cataloging at Northwestern, this is 
easier to do when the catalog is online. 
"You are better able to consult it," she 
says, "and to consult it creatively; and 
you begin to think more in terms of the cat-
alog as your creation, rather than just" the 
individual records. This rather monstrous 
shift in attitude has certainly happened 
here, and is almost totally attributable to 
the switch from the card catalog to the on-
line one.'' 

The Reference Department at North-
western meets almost every week on Fri-
day mornings. As the last item of busi-
ness, new reference books of interest are 
introduced and briefly described. Two im-



portant questions will be asked about 
many of these books: ''What subject head-
ings have they given it?" and "Where is it 
classified?" We need to know because, in 
our reference collection of nearly fifty 
thousand volumes, the call number and 
subject headings are essential if we hope 
to find the books again. For many new ref-
erence books, such questions are not nec-
essary: as mentioned earlier, subject ac-
cess for proper names and easily 
identifiable concepts are excellent. For 
others, we nod our heads approvingly 
when we hear the subject headings-
" that's just where I'd look for it." But in 

The Reliability Factor 55 

all too many cases, everyone simply 
groans-"they've done it to us again." 
Can we, as a profession, consider the dis-
tress catalog users would feel if they knew 
how many books they may never find be-
cause of inadequacies in the application of 
subject headings? Can we summon up the 
commitment and the resources necessary 
to produce really adequate subject access? 
Such a task would require a greatly in-
creased application of human time and in-
telligence in an era when we turn all too 
readily to computers for solutions. But for 
catalog users, the results would be of ines-
timable value . 

REFERENCES AND NOTES 

1. Pauline A. Cochrane, "Modem Subject Access in the Online Age," American Libraries 15:80-83 
(Feb. 1984); 145-50 (Mar. 1984); 250-55 (Apr. 1984); 336-39 (May 1984); 438-43 Gune 1984); 527-29 
(July/Aug. 1984). 

2. Carol A. Mandel and Judith Herschman, "Online Subject Access-Enhancing the Ubrary Cata-
log," Journal of Academic Librarianship 9:148-55 (July 1983). 

3. Views on the shortcomings of LCSH from after World War TI unti11979 have been gathered by 
Monika Kirtland and Pauline Cochrane, "Critical Views of LCSH-Ubrary of Congress Subject 
Headings: A Bibliographical and Bibliometric Essay, " Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 1:71-94 
(1982). 

4. A. C. Foskett, The Subject Approach to Information, 4th ed . (London: Bingley, 1982), p.94. 
5. Lois Mai Chan, Library of Congress Subject Headings: Principles and Application (Uttleton, Colo.: U-

braries Unlimited, 1978), p.24. Chan points out here that consistency does not necessarily imply 
uniform entry-bringing together all the books under a single heading. Theoretically, it would be 
possible to use several synonyms for a topic and still maintain consistency, as long as all the books 
were given all the headings. Economy, however, has so far required that we instead make see ref-
erences from the unused synonyms . · 

6. David Judson Haykin, Subject Headings: A Practical Guide (Washington, D.C.: Govt. Print. Off., 
1951), p.7. 

7. John M. Christ, Concepts and Subject Headings; Their Relation in Information Retrieval and Library Sci-
ence (Methuen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1972), p.141. 

8. The headings are Information Storage and Retrieval Systems-Directories; Machine-readable 
Bibliographic Data-Directories; Information Networks-Directories; On-line Bibliographic 
Searching-Directories; On-line Data Processing-Directories; Computer Industry-
Directories; Electronic Data Processing; and Business-Data Processing. 

9. Marcia J. Bates, ''Factors Affecting Subject Catalog Search Success," Journal of the American Society 
for Information Science 28:161-69 (May 1977), p .166. 

10. The Frankenstein Catalog, by Donald F. Glut Qefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1984), for example, has 
the following subject headings: Shelley, Mary Wollstonecroft, 1797-1851; Frankenstein-
Bibliography; Shelley, MaryWollstonecroft, 1797-1851-Adaptations-Bibliography; Franken-
stein Films-Catalogs; Monsters in Literature-Bibliography; Monsters in Mass Media-
Catalogs. 

11 . The fact that in the case of professional schools, the formula is different, producing Medical 
Colleges-United States, Law Schools-United States, but S~ools of Architecture-United 
States; although a parallel inconsistency, this is an example of inconsistency among subject 
headings-far less damaging, it seems to me, than the inconsistency in the application of subject 
headings I have been describing, as it can more easily be mitigated by cross-references. 

12. For the skeptical reference librarian's point of view on some of these matters, see Anne G. Lipow, 



56 College & Research Libraries January 1986 

''Practical Considerations of the Current Capabilities of Subject Access in Online Public Cata-
logs," Library Resources & Technical Services 27:81-87 Oan./Mar. 1983). 

13. For example, Edward T. O'Neill and Rao Aluri, ''Library of Congress Subject Heading Patterns in 
OCLC Records," Library Resources & Technical Services 25:63-80 Oan./Mar. 1981); Robert P. Holley 
and Robert E. Killheffer, "Is There an Answer to the Subject Access Crisis?" Cataloging & Classifi-
cation Quarterly 1:125-33 (2/31982). 

14. Holley and Killheffer, p.132. 
15. Mandel and Herschman, p.149. 
16. U.S. Library of Congress, Subject Cataloging Manual: Subject Headings, rev. May 30, 1984, proposed 

final draft. 
17. Patricia B. Knapp, ''Subject Catalog in the College Library: An Investigation of Terminology,'' 

Library Quarterly 14:214-28 Ouly 1944); Bates, p.166; Karen L. Markey, The Process of Subject Search-
ing in the Library Catalog: Final Report of the Subject Access Research Project (Dublin, Ohio: OCLC, 
1983), p.60. (ED 231390). 

18. Holley and Killheffer, p.130.