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In information retrieval, an index term (also known as subject term, subject heading, descriptor, or keyword) is a term that captures the essence of the topic of a document. Index terms make up a controlled vocabulary for use in bibliographic records .
LCSH is the world's most widely used subject vocabulary. [1] Despite LCSH's wide-ranging and comprehensive scope, libraries that deal with more specific types of collections or user communities may use other vocabularies; for example, many medical libraries in the United States use the National Library of Medicine's Medical Subject Headings (MeSH).
Most subject headings come with a short description or definition. See the MeSH description for diabetes type 2 as an example. [6] The explanatory text is written by the MeSH team based on their standard sources if not otherwise stated. References are mostly encyclopaedias and standard textbooks of the subject areas.
An index (pl.: usually indexes, more rarely indices) is a list of words or phrases ('headings') and associated pointers ('locators') to where useful material relating to that heading can be found in a document or collection of documents. Examples are an index in the back matter of a book and an index that serves as a library catalog.
For example, in the Library of Congress Subject Headings [6] (a subject heading system that uses a controlled vocabulary), preferred terms—subject headings in this case—have to be chosen to handle choices between variant spellings of the same word (American versus British), choice among scientific and popular terms (cockroach versus ...
Subject indexing is the act of describing or classifying a document by index terms, keywords, or other symbols in order to indicate what different documents are about, to summarize their contents or to increase findability. In other words, it is about identifying and describing the subject of documents. Indexes are constructed, separately, on ...
The following is a list of the codes for MeSH (Medical Subject Headings), a comprehensive controlled vocabulary for the purpose of indexing journal articles and books in the life sciences. It is a product of the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM).
Catalogers at the United States Library of Congress chose one form—"O'Brien, Flann, 1911–1966"—as the official heading. [20] The example contains all three elements of a valid authority record: the first heading O'Brien, Flann, 1911–1966 is the form of the name that the Library of Congress chose as authoritative. In theory, every record ...