The Pursuit of Meaning: Epistemological Approach to Subject Analysis and Consistency Between Catalogers in Determination of Subject Matter of Documents

Abstract

Purpose: Librarians always use Subject Headings and thesauruses as Controlled Vocabulary. This means that cataloguers must select a single subject when referring to these sources for a single document. But by looking at most of the library catalogs, such an assumption is not confirmed and two cataloguers have attributed two different subjects to a single document. Why is this? Why are two catalogers/ indexers who see the same text and the same Standard Subject Heading or Controlled Vocabulary unable to agree on the subject matter of the document?Methodology: Because the main problems of the representation of documents are concerned with meaning and language, the subject analysis is here explored from a philosophical perspective and thereby provides an understanding of the subject analysis process. The presentation of this analysis is based on the framework of Gadamer's hermeneutic and Wittgenstein's interpretive theory.Findings: This is part of the author's publications on philosophical issues in information science, especially on hermeneutics and the interpretive aspects of librarians' work, that hear followed by an epistemological approach to subject analysis in cataloging and indexing.Conclusion: Discussing meaning-making and subject analysis as an epistemological concept and as found, for instance, in cataloging and indexing which reflect expressions of that prejudice, may provide an opportunity to indexers and cataloguers to explore the interpretive aspects and hermeneutic uncertainty and consider as a concept in a part of their field of work.Value: The meaning of a text or subject matter in a book may result from the interaction of sense- the cataloger's or author's mind on one hand, and engaged lingual system (SH, Classification systems, CV, or any other documentary tools), social environment and social-cultural atmosphere on the other hand.

Keywords

• subject analysis
• subject indexing
• philosophical perspective
• meaning-making
• uncertainty