May/June 2008
Professional Pages Book Review
Simple and Satisfying: Review of Sears List, 19th edition
Miller, Joseph, and Barbara A. Bristow. 2007. Sears List of Subject Headings. New York: H. W. Wilson Company. ISBN-13: 9780824210762. $145. 823 pages.
⋅⋅⋅ Simple and satisfying — just like the “comfort food ” at your local diner!
The 19th edition of the Sears List of Subject Headings melds the traditional with the new. New headings and categories that address contemporary issues join the traditional streamlined approach to subject headings found in Sears. The combination continues to make Sears the choice of most school and public libraries. Sears 19 breaks new ground in helping both teacher-librarians and public librarians enhance records by adding subject headings and metadata that will enhance the cataloging description of the item and thus provide contextual reference for both identification and content analysis.
Several notable 19th edition features include over 440 completely new subject headings and two totally new categories — "Islam" and "Graphic Novels." Expanded coverage of headings in the science/technology, lifestyle/entertainment, politics/world affairs, and literature/arts categories are also noteworthy additions.
Once again, Joseph Miller and Barbara Bristow maintain the primary mission of Sears by using simplified vocabulary specifically geared for the school and small public library setting and by retaining an awareness of the descriptive searching and cataloging needs from an educator’s perspective. In addition, both Miller and Bristow take time to focus in-depth on the mechanics of creating Sears subject headings. They emphasize that there exist certain “Sears-specific ” subject heading elements and developmental strategies which apply specifically to identifying and/or creating Sears headings to use in metadata describing materials from both a “child-centered” and “K-12 curriculum perspective.”
For example, Sears 19 provides broad conceptual overviews and detailed instructions for the four types of Sears subject headings — topical, form, geographic, and proper names. Both the forms of the headings (i.e., single words, compound headings, phrase headings, etc.) and the rules for creating and adding subdivisions (i.e., chronological, geographic, form, etc.) — as well as their order of presentation — are included in the “Principles of the Sears List” chapter.
While Sears does a fine job of providing comprehensive subject heading coverage, there are some subjects that are difficult to address descriptively using the Sears structure, notably descriptions for biographies (both individual and collective), nationality descriptions, literary forms (including criticisms and collections), government policy, etc. Sears provides suggestions for working with its headings in relation to these material forms and concepts. However, for those items and topics that cannot be adequately described using the Sears List of Subject Headings (or other “controlled/authority file-monitored ” subject thesauri such as the Library of Congress Subject Headings — LCSH), strategies exist for incorporating local or “uncontrolled/non-authority file-monitored” headings into metadata records created using the MARC metadata standard. One of these strategies is to enter these headings into the MARC field tag 653 – Uncontrolled Heading.
(Please refer to “CE-MARC: The educator’s library ‘receipt’ ” — KQWeb, vol. 35 no. 1 — for a review of the MARC field tag 653, “uncontrolled” descriptive cataloging concepts, and the role these subject headings typically play in school library materials location, evaluation, lesson planning, and lesson delivery. The article is found on KQWeb and available at http://www.ala.org/ala/aasl/aaslpubsandjournals/kqweb/kqarchives/volume35/KQW35_1Adamich.pdf.)
⋅⋅⋅ A taste of the new headings and a “new twist on old favorites”
As was mentioned earlier, two new categories are introduced in Sears, 19th ed. — "Islam" and "Graphic Novels." In the former category, Islam and Politics, Islamic Music, Muslim Women, Shiites, Sunnis, and Dervishes are some of the new headings. The latter category features interesting genre headings such as Adventure Graphic Novels, Romance Graphic Novels, Superhero Graphic Novels, Manga, Komodo, and Mecha.
In keeping with the theme of retaining traditional content while adapting to new trends and concepts, editors Miller and Bristow worked with their committees to include new headings such as Computer Animation, Open Access Publishing, and Stem Cell Research in the “Science and Technology” category. Neopaganism, Reality Television Programs, and Body Piercing appear in the “Lifestyle and Entertainment” category. Examples of new headings in the “Politics and World Affairs” category are War Reparations, Suicide Bombers, and Border Patrols; and Urban Fiction and Art Pottery debut in “Literature and Arts.” These new terms will promote greater access to both recent library acquisitions and past titles that lacked clearly defined descriptive elements.
While most of the Sears subject headings structurally maintain a current, unbiased view of a concept or topic, there are some unusual choices that may cause debate, including making “Woman-Man Relationship” a SEE reference for “Man-Woman Relationship.”
Another great improvement to the Sears 19th ed. is the streamlining of several subject headings that may have evolved or needed structural modification to clarify their meaning. For example, the heading Stereotype (Psychology) was discontinued and replaced with Stereotype (Social Psychology). Likewise, the heading Libraries and the Elderly is now Elderly — Library Services.
Of course, the structural flexibility of Sears remains. Users can create a variety of authorized headings based on one template heading or guideline, such as adding specific breeds of dogs “as needed.” While some may view structural flexibility as an advantage, others consider this aspect of Sears its “missing link,” desiring more concise entry rules. To address those criticisms, Sears includes some specific guidelines in the aforementioned “Principles of the Sears List” chapter. Once again, this chapter can be used as a pocket cataloger’s guide. It provides a background on Charles A. Cutter’s specific and direct entry — the idea that if a specific subject exists for an entry, it should be added. Additionally, the “Principles of the Sears List” chapter explains how the teacher-librarian may create a heading according to guidelines if the desired heading does not exist. Furthermore, the inclusion of suggested Dewey numbers for each subject heading continues in Sears 19, providing yet another aid for the school librarian to use when evaluating the catalog for both location and contextual usefulness/accuracy.
Thus, Sears is definitely a “mainstay” — an essential tool for all teacher-librarians and school libraries.
Upcoming news on Sears, Spanish Language edition.
Watch for an in-depth review of the groundbreaking Sears List of Subject Headings, Spanish Language Edition in a future print issue of Knowledge Quest or online at KQWeb.
This photo of Tom with his mom was taken at the Glenmoor
Gathering of Significant Automobiles in front of a beautiful
1936 Cord 812.
Tom Adamich has been a certified teacher-librarian since 2000 and a librarian since 1991. A graduate of the Kent State University (Ohio) School of Library/Information Science and KSU College of Education (School Library Media Certification), Tom has been a teacher-librarian and consultant for the Indian Valley Local Schools (Ohio) since 1999 and president of the Visiting Librarian Service, a contract librarian firm he has operated on a full- or part-time basis since 1993. Currently, Tom also serves as the Cataloging Librarian at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh, PA, and has been involved in K-12 cataloging research and its connection to critical thinking skill development and standards-based education since 1998.
Professional Pages Book Reviews are a KQWeb feature editied by Carolyn Karis.
