Improving OPAC Subject Access: The ADFA Experiment

Abstract

The Australian Defence Force Academy (AD FA) library has embarked on an ambitious project to upgrade subject access in its online public access catalog (OPAC) by adding an average of twenty-one multiword terms from the table of contents and/or index to the 653 field in the MARC record for each book. After reviewing six months of work involving some 6, 000 books, this study attempts a preliminary evaluation of the impact on the workload and resources, as well as on subject access.

Tables of Contents in Library Catalogs: A Quantitative Examination of Analytic Catalogs

“…By increasing the natural text volume dramatically, the number of records retrieved in a topical search will increase (Lancaster, EIIikea and Connell 1989). This was demonstrated by Brryne and Micco in a pilot study and laier re#lirmed by Beatty in a {ull-scale study (Byrne and Micco 1988;Beatty 1991). By adding content-bearing words from tables of contents to the catalog, theyreported a3\OVo increase in the number of items lbund.…”

“…Although many authors have studied catalogs with enhanced contents infbrmation since the Hoflhan and Magner study, they rarely specified the number of composite works and citable works in the catalog ( Byrne and Micco 1988;Beatty 1991;Michalak 1990). Only Weintraub and Shimoguchi (1993) did so in their study of catalog record enhancement.…”

An Analysis of Tables of Contents in Recent English-Language Books

“…It has been shown in the literature that the inclusion of TOCs in catalog records increases retrieval potential, both for topical searches and name searches (Settel and Cochrane 1982;Byrne and Micco 1988;Dillon and \['enzel 1989;Michalak 1990). TOCs are also one aspect of description that users demand (Matthews, Lawrence and Ferguson 1983;Mandel 1983).…”

“…In an earlier article reporting on the SAP, Atherton (1978) reported that of the selected pool ofbooks, only halfhad usable contents pages, and of these, only some could be deemed to have informative contents pages. Byrne and Micco (1988) conducted the Enhanced Subject Project (ESP), which was subsequently undertaken by the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA). Using the same rules for selecting supplementary terms from the contents and index pages as used in the SAP, librarians at ADFA added terms from the chapterJevel headings of contents pages into 653 fields in the bibliographic record for each book.…”

Subject Enhancement: Report on an Experiment

“…A recent project at the Australian Defence Force Academy Library, using the same technique, had similar findings of better retrieval but also does not report on how book use was affected. 6 Other research demonstrates the difficulty of linking book use to the fullness of the bibliographic record. At times it appears that the standard catalog record is all but irrelevant, as in William Aguilar's experiment.…”