Subject Access to Your Information

1. Subject Access to Your Information Sandy Tucker Texas A&M University Libraries August 1, 2006 Second International Symposium on Transportation Technology Transfer

2. Introduction • You have packages – books, pamphlets, files, electronic documents. • You have records of packages – cards or an online database. Other? • We’re talking about adding subject information to the records of packages. • Specifically, we’ll talk about using a “controlled vocabulary.”

3. Controlled Vocabulary • Using a fixed list of subject terms. • Why? To pull together all of the information on a topic, no matter what terms the author has used. • Example: • Driving under the influence • Driving while intoxicated • Drunk driving

4. You Have Choices • Clearinghouse Subject List • LTAP Center Subject Lists • Transportation Research Thesaurus • Your own list

5. Use a Short List or a Long List of Terms? • If you have a small collection, a short list of terms is appropriate. • If you have a large collection, a longer list of more specific terms, such as the Transportation Research Thesaurus, may be helpful. • Longer list will help describe your packages in more specific ways.

6. Subject Access to Other Kinds of Information • People – Expertise • Groups of People • Projects • Equipment, Facilities • Use the same set of subject headings to describe them.

7. Transportation Research Thesaurus (TRT) • Created under the National Cooperative Highway Research Program. • Available electronically to search or download at http://trt.trb.org/ (TRB). • Also at National Transportation Library: http://ntl.bts.gov/trt/trt_topterms.jsp. • Covers all modes and aspects of transportation.

8. Purposes of the TRT • To provide a common set of terms for use by authors, indexers, and searchers. • To promote consistency in assignment of index terms. • To show relationships between terms – broader, narrower, related. • To serve as a searching aid in retrieval of documents.

9. Structure of TRT • Terms are grouped into 21 facets or hierarchies. • Each facet has a top term, for example, Testing. • Each facet contains terms that are closely related and subordinate to the top term.

10. Available Views of Terms • Hierarchical – to see broader and narrower terms and to see how a term fits into the larger scheme. • Alphabetical – useful if you know the first word of the term. • Keyword – to find phrases that contain your term. • From each view you can jump to others.

11. Postable/Nonpostable Terms • TRT contains both postable terms, which are intended for use, and nonpostable terms, also called lead-in vocabulary. • Nonpostable terms direct the user to the preferred, postable term.

15. Indexing • Use as many terms from as many hierarchies as needed to describe the item fully. • The number of terms needed will vary according to the nature of the document but will typically range from six to ten. • The book in the example I’m going to show needs just three terms.

16. Example - Indexing • Title: The Impact of Highways on Wetlands • Terms: • Highways (from Facilities facet) • Environmental Impacts (from Environment facet) • Wetlands (from Areas & Regions facet)

17. Searching • Use the TRT terms you have assigned to search your own collection. • Use TRT terms to search TRIS Online for additional information. • http://ntl.bts.gov/trt/trt_topterms.jsp • http://trt.trb.org/trt.asp

19. Summary • Add subject terms to your records to pull together all of your information on a topic. • Think about adding subject terms to records of people or equipment in addition to records of documents. • Use a list of terms that is scaled to your collection.

20. Summary, cont. • Consider using the Transportation Research Thesaurus for your subject headings if • your collection is large • you need specificity in your terminology. • Use the Transportation Research Thesaurus to select terms for searching TRIS Online.

21. Questions, Discussion?