Subject Headings for Volunteer Searchers

Think of the shelf in your fellowship hall where Lent studies sit next to Advent devotionals and a donated parenting book. When you write a heading on the box or the card, you tell a parent what the item is about without opening it. In information retrieval, that label is called an index term, and it is also known as a subject term, a subject heading, a descriptor, or a keyword. You use it as a keyword to retrieve a document in an information system, for instance a catalog or a search engine. If two volunteers use two different words for the same topic, a family will find one box and miss the other.

Free notes feel quick. One volunteer writes Easter, another writes Resurrection, a third writes Spring program. All three mean the same shelf, but a catalog search will treat them as different places. Index terms make up a controlled vocabulary for use in bibliographic records, which means everyone chooses from the same agreed list. You can keep that list on one sheet near the checkout notebook and ask every helper to use only those words. When the wording stays steady, a search for prayer brings up every prayer study, prayer card set, and prayer kit you hold.

Your parish shelf does the same work on a small scale that a large library does at scale. Index terms are an integral part of bibliographic control, which is the function by which libraries collect, organize, and disseminate documents. Collect means you gather what was donated or bought. Organize means you give each item a heading and a place. Disseminate means you let families know what you have through a list, a binder, or a simple catalog. If you want a model for that three-step habit, the cataloging basics for congregational shelves show how small teams keep it steady week by week.

Index terms can consist of a word, a phrase, or an alphanumerical term, so you are not limited to single words. A single word such as Baptism works for a general shelf. A phrase such as First Communion preparation tells a parent much more about age and use. An alphanumerical term such as VBS 3A can mark the third kit for a younger group when you run out of plain words. The rule for you is simple. Use the shortest label that still tells a tired parent on Sunday morning exactly what is inside without guesswork.

Index terms are created by analyzing the document either manually with subject indexing or automatically with automatic indexing or more sophisticated methods of keyword extraction. On a parish shelf, your work is manual. You open the kit, you look at the theme, the age range, and the kind of activity, then you pick headings from your list. You can compare your parish list with the index term overview to see how libraries define the same idea. Automatic indexing scans text and pulls out repeated words, which can help when you type leader guides into a computer, but it will not know that two different stories teach the same prayer.

A popular form of keywords on the web is tags, which are directly visible and can be assigned by non-experts. That is close to what happens when youth helpers add sticky notes to a box. Tags invite many words from many people, which brings fresh ideas but also clutter. Index terms can either come from a controlled vocabulary or be freely assigned, and you need both sides in the right place. Let helpers suggest free words on a slip inside the box, then let one person decide which controlled heading goes on the outside and in the catalog. The term descriptor was coined by Calvin Mooers in 1948, and it is particularly used for a preferred term from a thesaurus, which is a reminder to prefer one agreed word when several are possible.

Most web search engines are designed to search for words anywhere in a document, the title, the body, and so on. This being the case, a keyword can be any term that exists within the document. However, priority is given to words that occur in the title, words that recur numerous times, and words that are explicitly assigned as keywords in the code. You can use the same habit when you describe a Bible study in your binder. Put the main topic in the title line, repeat it in the short description if it truly fits, and fill the keyword line on purpose instead of leaving it blank. A clear title plus a steady heading will bring that study up first when a volunteer searches.

Index terms can be further refined using Boolean operators such as AND, OR, NOT. AND is normally unnecessary as most search engines infer it, so "prayer youth" already means both words. OR will search for results with one search term or another or both, which helps when your churches use two names for one season. NOT eliminates a word or phrase from the search, getting rid of any results that include it, which helps when Advent crafts bury Advent readings. Multiple words can also be enclosed in quotation marks to turn the individual index terms into a specific index phrase, so "First Communion" in quotes finds that phrase and not every page with first and communion apart. Teach these three words and the quotes to your librarian and your VBS coordinator.

You do not need to invent every heading alone. Examples of this kind of work include Canadian Subject Headings, Library of Congress Subject Headings, Medical Subject Headings, Polythematic Structured Subject Heading System, and Subject Headings Authority File. Author keywords are also an integral part of literature, and many journals and databases provide access to index terms made by authors of the respective articles. How qualified the provider is determines the quality of both indexer-provided index terms and author-provided index terms. In general, an author will have difficulty providing indexing terms that characterize his or her document relative to other documents in the database. For you, that means the writer of a study may pick a clever title while you still need a plain heading that places it next to similar studies. The Simple Knowledge Organization System language provides a way to express index terms with Resource Description Framework for use in the context of the Semantic Web, which matters when your catalog goes online. The subject map of a congregational library can help you borrow broader headings and keep your local wording plain.

Take one shelf this week, list what is really there, pick one heading per topic from a single sheet, write it on each box and in your binder, and ask the next volunteer to use only that sheet.