Mary and Jeff Bell Library -- Subject Headings

What are they?

Subject Headings (or "controlled vocabulary") are assigned words or phrases which must be used when searching the online catalog (Portal) by subject. For example, if you want to write a paper on the death penalty, should you look under "death penalty"; "execution" or "capital punishment"? Doing a keyword search will yield some results. Doing a subject search will yield all results.

Most library catalogs use a subject heading vocabulary developed by the Library of Congress (LC), which publishes these headings in a multi-volume set referred to as LCSH or "the big red books." Bell Library has copies of these volumes available at the Reference Desk and in Rm. 109.

There are many specialized vocabularies that are also used. For example, the Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors (also located at the Ready Reference Shelf) is used in the ERIC database (education), and many medical and health databases, including Medline and PubMed, use a vocabulary developed by the National Library of Medicine called Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) ).

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How do I use them?

Using LCSH is like using a dictionary or thesaurus: start by looking up a word or phrase as it occurs to you. Sometimes you won't find an appropriate term using the first word that comes to mind; so here are two strategies you can use to find one:

Think of a synonym (word or phrase with a similar meaning), and look that up.

Do a keyword search in the library catalog, find an item that is on your topic, and look at the L.C. subjects listed in the record.

Once you find a subject heading, you can search the library catalog using your subject heading by typing it in a subject search.

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An Example:

Looking up the term "death penalty", the LoC tells you that "capital punishment" is the correct subject heading. (The following entries are taken from Volumes 1 and 2, 24th edition):

Death penalty
USE Capital punishment

So we look up "Capital punishment", and this is what we find:

Capital Punishment (May Subd Geog)
[HV8694-HV8699]

UF Abolition of capital punishment
Death penalty
BT Criminal law
Punishment
RT Executions and executioners
NT Crucifixion
Death row
Discrimination in capital punishment
Electrocution
Garrote
Hanging
Last meal before execution
Stoning

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Definitions:

So what do all those abbreviations mean? Here's a list (also found on the back of the front covers of each volume):

UF Used for (LC does not use this term)
NT Narrower term
BT Broader term
RT Related term
SA See Also term
(May Subd Geog): place names may follow the heading

We invite questions and/or comments and look forward to hearing from you. Contact Edward Kownslar at Edward.Kownslar@tamucc.edu.