COMPUTER AND MANUAL ANALYSIS OF SUBJECT TERMS ENTERED BY ONLINE CATALOG USERS

摘要

Subject queries were extracted from three universities' online catalogs and analyzed by computer and manually to determine the extent to which they matched subject headings in the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). Computer analyses show that nearly 25% of the subject queries entered by online catalog users are exact matches of LCSH. Yet, manual analyses show that, even though a user matches or closely matches LCSH-mr, the citations retrieved by this vocabulary are not necessarily satisfactory. Sometimes the closest LCSH-mr is not at all pertinent to a user's topic of interest. This study presents reasons why close matches of LCSH-mr are not always satisfactory and suggests approaches to finding the best matches of the catalog's controlled vocabulary.