Subject Access to Your Information

Sandy TuckerTexas A&M University Libraries

August 1, 2006Second International Symposium on Transportation Technology Transfer

Introduction You have packages – books, pamphlets,

files, electronic documents. You have records of packages – cards or

an online database. Other? We’re talking about adding subject

information to the records of packages. Specifically, we’ll talk about using a

“controlled vocabulary.”

Controlled Vocabulary Using a fixed list of subject terms. Why? To pull together all of the

information on a topic, no matter what terms the author has used.

Example:• Driving under the influence• Driving while intoxicated• Drunk driving

You Have Choices Clearinghouse Subject List LTAP Center Subject Lists Transportation Research Thesaurus Your own list

Use a Short List or a Long List of Terms? If you have a small collection, a short list

of terms is appropriate. If you have a large collection, a longer

list of more specific terms, such as the Transportation Research Thesaurus, may be helpful.

Longer list will help describe your packages in more specific ways.

Subject Access to Other Kinds of Information People – Expertise Groups of People Projects Equipment, Facilities Use the same set of subject headings to

describe them.

Transportation Research Thesaurus (TRT) Created under the National Cooperative

Highway Research Program. Available electronically to search or

download at http://trt.trb.org/ (TRB). Also at National Transportation Library:

http://ntl.bts.gov/trt/trt_topterms.jsp. Covers all modes and aspects of

transportation.

Purposes of the TRT To provide a common set of terms for

use by authors, indexers, and searchers. To promote consistency in assignment of

index terms. To show relationships between terms –

broader, narrower, related. To serve as a searching aid in retrieval

of documents.

Structure of TRT Terms are grouped into 21 facets or

hierarchies. Each facet has a top term, for example,

Testing. Each facet contains terms that are

closely related and subordinate to the top term.

Available Views of Terms Hierarchical – to see broader and

narrower terms and to see how a term fits into the larger scheme.

Alphabetical – useful if you know the first word of the term.

Keyword – to find phrases that contain your term.

From each view you can jump to others.

Postable/Nonpostable Terms TRT contains both postable terms, which

are intended for use, and nonpostable terms, also called lead-in vocabulary.

Nonpostable terms direct the user to the preferred, postable term.

Indexing Use as many terms from as many

hierarchies as needed to describe the item fully.

The number of terms needed will vary according to the nature of the document but will typically range from six to ten.

The book in the example I’m going to show needs just three terms.

Example - Indexing Title: The Impact of Highways on

Wetlands Terms:

• Highways (from Facilities facet)• Environmental Impacts (from Environment

facet)• Wetlands (from Areas & Regions facet)

Searching Use the TRT terms you have assigned to

search your own collection. Use TRT terms to search TRIS Online

for additional information.• http://ntl.bts.gov/trt/trt_topterms.jsp• http://trt.trb.org/trt.asp

Summary Add subject terms to your records to pull

together all of your information on a topic.

Think about adding subject terms to records of people or equipment in addition to records of documents.

Use a list of terms that is scaled to your collection.

Summary, cont. Consider using the Transportation

Research Thesaurus for your subject headings if• your collection is large• you need specificity in your terminology.

Use the Transportation Research Thesaurus to select terms for searching TRIS Online.

Questions, Discussion?