Subject analysis in cataloging

LIS professionals perform “subject analysis” in order to provide “subject access” to items in their collections (Holley & Joudrey, 2021, p. 159). Doing so, enables a cataloger to determine which subjects to apply to a resource, and Hoffman warns that “Subject analysis can be a complex and subjective process” (2019, p. 152).

Subject analysis is important because, in addition to providing subject access to one item that a viewer may be looking for, it also allows searchers to “colocate resources of related subjects,” it “provides a logical location for the resource,” and it “saves the time of the user” (Kammer, n.d., slide 7).

One of the challenges identified in my reading was that of inconsistent language among catalogers. Hoffman cites a study that found low “interindexer consistency” among 340 LIS students (2019, p. 112). The students were asked to “assign subject headings to six books, and students assigned an average of sixty-two different subject headings to each book” (Hoffman, 2019, p. 112).

I encountered just such a situation when comparing subject headings for two books in my school library: Gracefully Grayson by Ami Polonsky, and Melissa by Alex Gino. These books address very similar themes: that of a transfeminine person pursuing a “female” role in a school play when society-at-large still views this person as someone assigned male at birth.

Two subject headings that seem particularly of relevance: Transgender people--Fiction, and Theater--Fiction; only appear in the LOC catalog attached to Gracefully Grayson. The dominant subject heading for Melissa is Gender identity--Fiction, and this subject heading is missing from the record for Gracefully Grayson. Because these relevant subject headings were only assigned to one instead of both of these similar books, a library search using these terms would not co-locate both resources.

Another challenge is that determination by Wilson (cited by Hoffman, 2019, p. 110), that “subjects are indeterminate” and “there are no ‘right’ subjects that describe everything that a document is about” (Hoffman, 2019, p. 110).

References:
Hoffman, G. L. (2019). Organizing library collections: Theory and practice. Rowman & Littlefield.

Holley, R. & Joudrey, D. (2021). Aboutness and conceptual analysis: A review. Cataloging and Classification Quarterly 59(2-3), 159-185.

Kammer, J. (n.d.) Subject analysis [Slide presentation]. University of Central Missouri, LIS 5700.