Attempts To Improve Subject Access
Despite these problematic aspects of subject access to fiction, interest in analyzing fiction for subject retrieval has a long history.
H.W. Wilson's Fiction Catalog, for example, was first published in 1908. The entry headings in Fiction Catalog attempt to summarize the novel, not to specify it's "aboutness."(Beghtol 1994, 2) The Fiction Catalog used the same subject headings, for the most part, that were used for non-fiction in Wilson's Standard Catalog for Public Libraries, but it also used the Cleveland Public Library's fiction subject headings.
Fiction Index: A Guide to over 10,000 Works of Fiction Arranged under 2,000 Subject Headings was first published in Britain in 1953. Fiction Index uses headings that fall into five groups:
- » concrete and factual, eg animals, localities, historical time period, persons, war
- » abstract (e.g., good and evil, jealousy, love)
- » types or genre (detective stories, science fiction)
- » forms and techniques (experimental novels, short stories)
- » supplementary, including lists of fictional detectives and criminals, light romances, western stories (Beghtol, 3)
Fiction Index, like Fiction Catalog, uses the summarization approach to subject analysis - designed to provide a brief idea of what the work is "about." It does not provide detailed analysis of the content of a work of fiction.
Individual libraries such as the Hennepin County Library have created their own fiction subject headings. Unreal! Hennepin County Library Subject Headings for Fictional Characters and Places, first published in 1991 is a list of more than 1500 headings used at HCL for cataloguing literary works that feature fictional characters and locales. The following is an example of an entry:
Dr. Watson, born 1852 see Watson, John Hamish, born 1852
In 1986, the American Library Association Resources and Technical Services Subcommittee on Subject Access to Individual Works of Fiction, Drama, etc., was established to study issues involved in the access to these types of works in all formats. (Beghtol, 4) The first edition of Guidelines on Subject Access to Individual Works of Fiction, Drama, Etc.. was published in 1990, the second edition was published in 2000.
This examination now turns to the following case studies to illustrate how two public libraries have acted to improve increased subject access to individual works of fiction. The Vancouver Public Library has been providing improved subject access to fiction for just over a decade, while the Hennepin County Library, located in Minneapolis, MN., has been at the forefront of providing increased subject access to fiction for over twenty years.