Objectives of Subject Cataloguing
All forms of subject catalogues have a two-fold objective: first to enable an enquirer to identify documents on a given subject and second, to make known the presence of material on allied or related subjects. Shera and Egan (1956) summarise the objectives of subject cataloguing as follows:
- To provide access by subject to all relevant material;
- To provide subject access to materials through all suitable principles of subject organisation such as matter and applications;
- To bring together references to materials, which treat substantially the same subject regardless of differences among groups of subject specialists, and/or from the changing nature of the concepts with the discipline itself,
- To show such affiliations among subject fields, which may depend upon use or application of knowledge;
- To provide entry through any vocabulary common to a considerable group of users, specialists or laymen;
- To provide formal description of the subject content of any bibliographic unit in the most precise, or specific terms possible: whether the description is in the form of a class, number or symbol; and
- To provide means to the users to make a selection from among all terms in any particular category, according to any chosen set of criteria such as, most thorough, most recent, etc.