Classification Practice

Programme Features:
A practical course, for people with some experience in subject indexing for catalogues and databases, on the representation of the subject matter of various types of office and library materials.

• Introduction
  • basic principles and objectives
  • summarising versus in-depth indexing
  • pre-coordination and post-coordination
  • alphabetical and classified schemes
• General schemes
  • the alphabetical subject heading approach
  • the classified approach
  • the alphabetical subject index
• Special schemes and thesauri
  • the alphabetical subject heading approach
  • the classified approach
• Build-your-own subject heading or classification scheme
  • controlled and uncontrolled language indexing
  • authority files
• Practical exercises
  • identification of subject content of an item
  • establishing subject index terms for an item
  • establishing classification codes for an item
  • making appropriate entires for the alphabetical index
  • choosing your own terms and cross-references

Why you should attend:

If you have some experience of subject indexing, but need guidance or practice or want to refresh knowledge gained some time ago, this course will give you the skills needed. Participants are invited to bring typical material from their collections to form a group of items that can be considered in the practical sessions. Where an in-house scheme is used, it may be appropriate to bring a copy of the scheme to the course. Major themes throughout the course are your users, your collection and tailoring the approach to meet their needs. A pre-enrolment form is circulated prior to the course to ascertain the specialised indexing topics of interest to their participants. As far as possible the practical exercises will relate to these topics. This course is not aimed at complete beginners; they would benefit by taking Aslib's companion course Basic Cataloguing and Indexing prior to this course.

On completing this course, you will be able to:

• understand the different ways in which subjects can be represented and recognise their merits
• use subject heading lists and classification schemes effectively
• represent subjects at levels appropriate to your working environment
• consider devising your own scheme, with appropriate authority control

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Companion Courses:
Cataloguing Practice
Constructing a Thesaurus