This week, I’m wrapping up the indexing piece of my project and beginning to actually format my Excel spreadsheets so they’ll be easier to transfer when I have to start putting the information online.
Right now, this is what my spreadsheets look like:
See all that red? Those are my random notes on what the subject heading of the article should probably be. What I’m working on is making all of those random notes into Library of Congress (LOC) official subject headings. The blue ones are headings that are closer to being LOC but may need to be updated or reformatted. But how to find the official LOC subject headings (which are called “authorities”)?
This (not) beautiful and (not) straightforward website. You’d think that the authoritative website on authorities would be much more streamlined. After all, it’s run by a place full of people whose livelihoods consist of cataloging and organizing information, and this website does not make one feel as if the information is at their fingertips. Using the LOC Authorities website requires a lot of digging and word manipulation.
But enough complaining. Ultimately the website is incredibly useful for finding relevant subject headings and determining where certain articles belong. I’ve just had to spend quite a bit of time finding those relevant subject headings.
Luckily, I’m not the only one who has struggled with using the LOC Authorities. A former UPS librarian created several thesauruses for specific things related to the University (a thesaurus in indexing is the specific system/group of headings consistently used in the index). And it’s in a much more user-friendly format…
Yep! Good old Excel. Much easier for me to use and does not require tons of word manipulation. Not everything in here is LOC official but it’s at least a lot closer than my own random headings that I’ve been using.
What’s the big to-do about using LOC Authorities? Using LOC headings will make the indexed articles searchable by subject and accessible to the general public, not just the campus community. It will allow the index to be included in larger database searches, not just in Sound Ideas. It makes my project mean so much more.
BONUS!
Right as I began to wrestle with the LOC Authorities website I came back across an article from the October 28, 1964 issue of The Trail about Collins Memorial Library’s conversion from Dewey Decimal system to the Library of Congress classification system, which is way more popular today. It doesn’t involve the LOC Authorities, but deals with the general domination of the LOC over all aspects of library life.
By: Jillian Zeidner