ABSTRACT
The effectiveness of two modes of subject representation - table of contents (TOC) and subject headings - in subject searching in an online public access catalog (OPAC) system was investigated. The retrieval difference between TOC and the Library of Congress subject headings (LCSH) was statistically significant; the effect of subject domain was not statistically significant; users had better success matching their keywords to TOC than to LCSH; but their keywords often failed to retrieve items similar to the target items. These findings underscore the need to bridge user keywords to both TOC and LCSH.
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Index Terms
- Retrieval effectiveness of table of contents and subject headings
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