Preface

Since the first edition in 1923, the Sears List has served the unique needs of small and medium-sized libraries, suggesting headings appropriate for use in their catalogs and providing patterns and instructions for adding new headings as they are required. The successive editors of the List have faced the need to accommodate change while maintaining a sound continuity. The new and revised headings in each edition reflect developments in the material catalogued and in the use of the English language, aiming always to make library collections as easily available as possible to library users.

The major feature of this new edition of the Sears List is the inclusion of more than four hundred and forty new subject headings. Of special note is the development of new headings in two areas: Islam and Graphic novels. The growing interest in Islam among the general public and in school curricula is reflected in the new material published, for which the Sears List now provides heading such as Islam and politics, Islamic music, Muslim women, Shiites, Sunnis, and Dervishes, among others.

The extraordinary growth in the publication and collection of graphic novels is the impetus for the addition of more than thirty new headings, among them: Adventure graphic novels, Romance graphic novels, Superhero graphic novels, Manga, Komodo, and Mecha. These new headings were suggested to us by Katherine L. Kan, a noted expert in the field. These headings are all genre headings and follow the patterns set by other literary form and genre headings already in the List.

New subject headings in a variety of other areas as well represent a major enhancement to the List in this edition. New headings have been added in the fields of science and technology, such as Computer animation, Open access publishing, and Stem cell research; in lifestyle and entertainment, such as Neopaganism, Reality television programs, and Body piercing; in politics and world affairs, such as War reparations, Suicide bombers, and Border patrols; and in literature and the arts, such as Urban fiction and Art pottery. Many provisions have been added for creating other new headings as needed. Many of the headings new to this edition were suggested by librarians representing various sizes and types of libraries, by commercial vendors of bibliographic records, and by the catalogers, indexers, and subject specialists at the H.W. Wilson Company.

A limited number of subject headings have been revised in this edition. For the convenience of librarians maintaining their catalogs, these revisions are spelled out in the List of Canceled and Replacement Headings found on page xlii.

The Principles of the Sears List, which follows this Preface, is intended both as a statement of the theoretical foundations of the Sears List and as a concise introduction to subject cataloging in general. It has been expanded in this edition to provide guidance to catalogers in creating headings for topics relating to Native American, government policy, and mythology and folkore.

The List of Commonly Used Subdivisions, which follows the Principles, lists, for the purpose of easy reference, every subdivision for which there is a provision in the List, no matter how specialized. At the same time, for every subdivision there is an entry in the alphabetical List with full instructions for the use of that particular subdivision. There are also many examples of the use of subdivisions, emphasizing that the use of subdivisions is an essential method of expanding and adapting the List to a library’s particular needs.

A History of the Sears List

Minnie Earl Sears prepared the first edition of this work in response to demands for a list of subject headings that was better suited to the needs of the small library than the existing American Library Association and Library of Congress lists. Published in 1923, the List of Subject Headings for Small Libraries was based on the headings used by nine small libraries that were known to be well cataloged. Minnie Sears used only See and “refer from” references in the first edition. In the second edition (1926) she added See also references at the request of teachers of cataloging who were using the List as a textbook. To make the List more useful for that purpose, she wrote a chapter on “Practical Suggestions for the Beginner in Subject Heading Work” for the third edition (1933).

Isabel Stevenson Monro edited the fourth (1939) and fifth (1944) editions. A new feature of the fourth edition was the inclusion of Dewey Decimal Classification numbers as applied in the Standard Catalog for Public Libraries. The new subjects added to the List were based on those used in the Standard Catalog Series and on the catalog cards issued by the H.W. Wilson Company. Consequently, the original subtitle “Compiled from Lists used in Nine Representative Small Libraries” was dropped.

The sixth (1950), seventh (1954), and eighth (1959) editions were prepared by Bertha M. Frick. In recognition of the pioneering and fundamental contribution made by Minnie Sears the title was changed to Sears List of Subject Headings with the sixth edition. Since the List was being used by medium-sized libraries as well as small ones, the phrase “for Small Libraries” was deleted from the title. The symbols x and xx were substituted for the “Refer from (see ref.)” and “Refer from (see also ref.)” phrases to conform to the format adopted by the Library of Congress.

The ninth edition (1965), the first of four to be prepared by Barbara M. Westby, continued the policies of the earlier editions. With the eleventh edition, the “Practical Suggestions for the Beginner in Subject Heading Work” was retitled “Principles of the Sears List of Subject Headings” to emphasize “principles,” and a section dealing with nonbook materials was added.

The thirteenth edition (1986), prepared by Carmen Rovira and Caroline Reyes, was the first to take advantage of computer validation capabilities. It also responded to the changing theory in subject analysis occasioned by the development of online public access catalogs. This effort was taken further in the fourteenth edition (1991) under the editorship of Martha T. Mooney, who reduced the number of compound terms, simplified many subdivisions, and advanced the work of uninverting inverted headings.

In accord with a suggestion of the Cataloging of Children’s Materials Committee of the American Library Association, many of the headings from Subject Headings for Children’s Literature (Library of Congress) were incorporated into the Sears List with the thirteenth edition. Since the Sears List is intended for both adult and juvenile collections, wherever the Library of Congress has two different headings for adult and juvenile approaches to a single subject, a choice of a single term was made for Sears. In cases where the Sears List uses the adult form, the cataloger of children’s materials may prefer to use the juvenile form found in Subject Headings for Children’s Literature.

In the fifteenth edition (1994), the first edited by Joseph Miller, the interval between publication of editions was shortened to provide a more timely updating of subject headings. In keeping with prevailing thinking in the field of library and information science, all remaining inverted headings were canceled in favor of the uninverted form. Likewise, the display of the List on the page was changed to conform to the NISO standards for thesauri approved in 1993. While Sears remains a list of subject headings and not a true thesaurus, it uses the labels BT, NT, RT, SA, and UF for broader terms, narrower terms, related terms, See Also, and Used for. A List of Canceled and Replacement Headings was added to facilitate the updating of catalogs. Also in the fifteenth edition many headings were added to enhance access to individual works of fiction, poetry, drama, and other imaginative works, such as films and radio and television programs, based on the Guidelines on Subject Access to Individual Works of Fiction, Drama, etc. prepared by a subcommittee of the Subject Analysis Committee of the ALA. These headings have since been updated in accordance with the Second edition of the Guidelines (2000).

In the sixteenth edition (1997) further instructions were added for the application of subdivisions, and the headings in the field of religion were extensively revised to reduce their exclusively Christian application and make them more useful for cataloging materials on other religions.

The major feature of the seventeenth edition (2000) was the revision of the headings for the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere. The headings Indians, Indians of North America, Indians of Mexico, etc., were cancelled in favor of Native Americans, which may be subdivided geographically by continent, region, country, state, or city. In further revisions in the seventeenth edition, many headings that formerly incorporated the word “modern” were simplified and clarified, such as Modern history and Modern art, and headings for various kinds of government policy were revised and regularized.

The 18th edition of the Sears List (2004) saw the inclusion of five hundred new subject headings and a significant addition to the Principles of the Sears List regarding the treatment of individual works of fiction, drama, and poetry.

The Scope of the Sears List

No list can possibly provide a heading for every idea, object, process, or relationship, especially not within the scope of a single volume. What Sears hopes to offer instead is a basic list that includes many of the headings most likely to be needed in small libraries together with patterns and examples that will guide the cataloger in creating additional headings as needed. New topics appear every day, and books on those topics require new subject headings. Headings for new topics can be developed from the Sears List in two ways, by establishing new terms as needed and by subdividing the headings already in the List. Instructions for creating new headings based on the pattern in Sears and sources for establishing the wording of new headings are given in the Principles of the Sears List. The various kinds of subdivisions and the rules for their application are also discussed in the Principles of the Sears List.

It is only by being flexible and expandable that Sears has been able over the years to fill the needs of various kinds of libraries. The degree or level of specificity required for a collection depends entirely on the material being collected. While a small library is unlikely to need very narrow topics of a technical or scientific nature, it is not at all unlikely that a small library might have a children’s book on a single concept such as Triangle or a gardening book on Irises. Neither of these terms is in Sears, but the first would be added as a narrower term under Shape and the second as a narrower term under Flowers.
Form of Headings

It was the policy of Minnie Sears to use the Library of Congress form of subject headings with some modification, chiefly the simplification of phrasing. The Sears List still reflects the usage of the Library of Congress unless there is some compelling reason to vary, but those instances of variation have become numerous over the years. A major difference between the two lists is that in Sears the direct form of entry has replaced the inverted form, on the theory that most library users search for multiple-word terms in the order in which they occur naturally in the language. In most cases cross-references have been made from the inverted form and from the Library of Congress form where it otherwise varies.

Scope Notes

As in previous editions, all the new and revised headings in this edition have been provided with scope notes where such notes are required. Scope notes are intended to clarify the specialized use of a term or to distinguish between terms that might be confused. If there is any question of what a term means, the cataloger should simply consult a dictionary. There are times, however, when subject headings require a stricter limitation of a term than the common usage given in a dictionary would allow, as in the case of Marketing, a term in business and economics, not to be confused with Grocery shopping. Here a scope note is required. Some scope notes distinguish between topics and forms, such as Encyclopedias and dictionaries for critical and historical materials and the subdivisions Encyclopedias and Dictionaries under topics for items that are themselves encyclopedias or dictionaries. There are also scope notes in Sears that identify any headings in the area of literature that may be assigned to individual works of drama, fiction, poetry, etc.

Classification

The classification numbers in this edition of Sears are taken from the 14th edition of the Abridged Dewey Decimal Classification (2004). The numbers are intended only to direct the cataloger to a place in the DDC schedules where material on that subject is often found. They are not intended as a substitute for consulting the schedules, notes, and manual of the DDC itself when classifying a particular item. The relationship between subject headings and classification is further discussed in the Principles of the Sears List.

Usually only one number is assigned to a subject heading. In some cases, however, when a subject can be treated in more than one discipline, the subject is then given more than one number in the List. The heading Chemical industry, for example, is given two numbers, 338.4 and 660, which represent possible classification numbers for materials dealing with the chemical industry from the viewpoints of economics and technology respectively. Classification numbers are not assigned to a few very general subject headings, such as Charters, Exhibitions, Hallmarks, and Identification, which cannot be classified unless a specific application is identified. The alphabetic notation of B for individual biographies is occasionally provided in addition to Dewey classification numbers for such materials. Numbers in the 810s and 840s prefixed by a C are given as optional numbers for topics in Canadian literature.

The Dewey numbers given in Sears are extended as far as is authorized by the Abridged Dewey Decimal Classification, which is seldom more than four places beyond the decimal point. When an item being classified has a particular form or geographic specificity, the number may be extended by adding form and geographic subdivisions from the Dewey tables. Only a few examples of built numbers are given in Sears, such as 940.53022 for World War, 1939-1945—Pictorial works. No library should feel the need to extend classification numbers beyond what is practical for the size of the library’s collection. For a discussion of close and broad classification and for instructions on building numbers from the Dewey tables, the cataloger should consult the introduction to the most recent edition of the Abridged Dewey Decimal Classification and Relative Index.

Style, Filing, Etc.

For spelling and definitions the editor has relied upon Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1961) and the Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, 2nd ed., revised and updated (1997). Capitalization and the forms of corporate and geographic names used as examples are based on the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd ed., 2002 revision. The filing of entries follows the ALA Filing Rules (1980).

Every term in the List that may be used as a subject heading is printed in boldface type whether it is a main term; a term in a USE reference; a broader, narrower, or related term; or an example in a scope note or general reference. If a term is not printed in boldface type, it is not used as a heading.