Another tip – searching for similar items by subject
OK … I have the perfect subject heading, so now I need a call number. Sometimes there is a “suggested” call number area, but we all know trusting that is risky at best. So, where do you go next? I would love to see what other people suggest. I like to go to the UF Catalog or the Library of Congress’ catalog, but some people don’t like swapping back and forth from window to window. Some people like to dive right into the Classification manuals in print, or online. Personally, I love the online version, but it is hard to find a starting point.
So, wouldn’t it be nice if you could just look up subject strings in Connexion? You can? Actually, YES! You can.
In the little window up top (the one with a magnifying glass next to it) you can type:
hlw=Alligator attacks–Florida–Periodicals
This will pull up records in OCLC with that subject heading! Now you can just search the call numbers of these items to get a good match. How are you supposed to remember what to type?
hlw = Heading-Library-Whole
Thank you to Jackie Brown for the heads up on this. Jackie, for those of you who don’t know her, is our Connexion specialist and member of the Training Committee. Doug Smith is currently the head of the training committee, so if you want to know if there is a better way to do something, ask! And if you don’t know, there are probably other folks who don’t know and would like to hear.
My understanding is classification is correlated with first subject heading am I correct.
If so where can I find this rule?
thanks
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:53 amprasad
Thank you to Nancy Poehlmann to leading me to the answer.
In the Subject Cataloging Manual, section H80:
General rule. Assign the heading that represents the predominant topic of the work as the first subject heading. If the predominant topic cannot be represented by a single heading, assign as the first and second headings the two headings that, taken together, express the predominant topic. Although it is not significant which of the two is assigned first and which second, if one of the two more closely approximates the class number it is usually assigned first.
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:05 am