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SUBJECT ACCESS. INF 389F: Organization of Records Information Professor Fran Miksa October 29, 2003. What Does the Phrase “Subject Access” Mean?—Pre-1890s—I . Subject Access associated with Classification of Knowledge (i.e., with a classificatory structure of subjects)
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SUBJECT ACCESS INF 389F: Organization of Records Information Professor Fran Miksa October 29, 2003
What Does the Phrase “Subject Access” Mean?—Pre-1890s—I • Subject Access associated with Classification of Knowledge (i.e., with a classificatory structure of subjects) • Subjects are the products of human mental discovery • Subjects are socially established and are naturally classified • Kinds of subjects (General—Concrete—Individual)—where “specific” means most concrete • Chief value—subjects considered part of a grand structure of knowledge
What Does the Phrase “Subject Access” Mean?—Pre-1890s—II • Subjects and IEs • IEs “treat” a subject • IEs have “themes” but these themes are of a “treated” subject • Virtually all “Subject Access” up to 1850s is based on the association of subjects as elements of classifications of knowledge
What Does the Phrase “Subject Access” Mean?—1890s-1950 • Shift towards equating “subject” with document content • Library cataloging (1890s-present) • Document has a subject like a human being has a personality • Forcefulness of Card Catalog format • Documentation (1890s—1920s—1950s) • A document has many “subjects” • Subject = a “topic” (where topic is a word/term denoting where in a document some idea is mentioned) • Attempts to keep subject structures intact.
What Does the Phrase “Subject Access” Mean?—III • 1960s— • The computer revolution • Documentation becomes ISAR • Perceived “bottleneck” & Automatic indexing • Atomization of subjects & the loss of structure • Position of other traditions of practice
The Complications Raised by Other IE Features • Medium of IE • Presentation format & Genre • Audience & Use • Complex subjects/Compound subjects • Physics of music; Sociological aspects of sports; History of Chemistry • Physics in India; Sports in 20th century England • Combinations of subjects & Other features of IEs • Dictionary of the physics of music • Humorous aspects of sports [i.e. an essay] • Children’s book of sports stories
Content Access Attributes • Generator of content • Topicality of content (“Aboutness”? “Of-ness”?) • Form (of presentation) & Genre (“in-ness”) of content • Audience & Use (“for-ness”) of content • Relationships of content with other “contents” • Same content • Augmented content • Transformed content (Essentially the same—Essentially different and therefore a new content)
Content Attribute Issues • Natural language vs. Controlled vocabulary • Automatic extraction vs. Manual assignment • Questions related to Structure • No structure—Minimal structure—Extensive structure • Structural relationships
Structural Relationships • Ordinate structure • Superordinate - Coordinate - Subordinate • Chains; Arrays • Kinds • Equivalence • Hierarchical • Generic • Part • Instance • Associative • Thesaurus relators: BT, NT, RT, Use/Used for
Methods for Identifying and Employing Content Attributes • Automatic extraction (if text is digital) • Read/study an IE • Gather clues • Clues from the IE itself (Title page; Table of contents; Index; Illustrations, etc.) • Clues from outside the IE itself (Container; Reviews; Reference works, etc.) • Convert Findings to Vocabulary of a Given System.
Subject Structures • Value related to purpose • Formats of: • Alphabetical only • Alphabetical with term relationships (Thesauri; Topic maps?) • Systematic • Ontologies of domains • Hierarchical taxonomies • Straight hierarchies • Faceted structures
Classical Library Taxonomies • Dewey Decimal Classification (1876- ) • Universal Decimal Classification (1895- • Library of Congress Classification (1898- ) • Bibliographic Classification (1st version, 1933-1960; BC2, 1960- ) • Colon Classification (1933- ) • BBK (Russian) (1955- )