The understanding of subject headings among students of librarianship

Abstract

Abstract Subject headings are words or a formation of phrases which represent the content of a document. Subject headings therefore serve as aid for librarians and users in helping to find a publication on a certain topic or notion. The paper is focused on how successfully the students of librarianship understand subject headings. For this purpose a survey was carried out at the Faculty of Arts in the week from February 12th to February 16th, 2001, among the students of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th academic year. The hypothesis is that the students of the 4th year have a better understanding of subject headings than other students. The reason lies in the fact that these students have been acquainted with the theory of subject headings within the course “Subject cataloguing” while others have not. For an accurate meaning of subject headings we have adopted the interpretation of the instructor Alenka Šauperl. It was found that students of the third year have defined in 63,1% (111 of 176 cases) the correct meaning of subject headings, while the students of the fourth year only in 45,8% (121 of 264 cases). This is an interesting result since the students of the third year are not acquainted in detail with the theory of subject headings within the subject “Classification”. The results of the inquiry showed that 48,1% (446 of 928 cases) of the students of librarianship correctly defined (understood) the meanings of the subject headings.

Keywords

• subject headings
• comprehension
• students
• librarianship