Subject cataloguing and the principles on which the choice of subject headings should be based

Inhaltsangabe oder Einleitung

The concept of subject cataloguing appeared on the scene in the mid-nineteenth century. Before then, descriptive cataloging was the only library cataloging that was practiced. Libraries were much smaller than they are today, and scholarly librarians then were able, with the aid of printed bibliographies, to be familiar with everything available on a given subject and guide the users to it.

With the rapid growth of knowledge in many fields in the course of the nineteenth century and the consequential increase in the volume of books and other library materials, it became desirable to do a preliminary subject analysis of such works and then to represent them in the catalogue in such a way that they would be retrievable by subject. This is subject cataloguing.

The choice of subject headings is based on some key principles. In this paper, I look at the concept of subject cataloguing in relation to the principles that govern the choice of the descriptive terms or subject headings.