E. Leide and Catherine Guastavino. Using the LCSH Hierarchy to Browse a Collection

Abstract

The Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) is a subject structure used to index large collections throughout the world. Browsing a collection through LCSH is difficult using current on-line tools in part because they are inadequately integrated with information collections. Users of these LCSH browsing tools are expected to find a promising LCSH string before using it to search for the information itself; many users do not have the patience for such a two-step process. This article proposes a method to fully integrate a specific collection in its subset of the LCSH hierarchy in order to facilitate LCSH browsing as well as information retrieval. Techniques are described to match LCSH strings assigned to the collection with an established string from the authority records, and build their specific LCSH hierarchy. The resulting subset of LCSH structure is described in terms of its size and broader/narrower term statistics, and implications for browsing and information retrieval are discussed. The results of this research have implications for institutions wishing to further capitalize on existing LCSH organization investments for the purpose of subject browsing and information retrieval.