SUBJECT INDEXING IN THE NEW ETHNOGRAPHIC-BIBLIOGRAPHY-OF-NORTH-AMERICA

This paper is concerned with practical and theoretical problems I enco untered in creating the Subject Thesaurus for the supplement to the fo urth edition of the Ethnographic Bibliography of North America1 and fo r the forthcoming comprehensive fifth edition of the bibliography. The re are several issues involved. The key practical problem is that the bibliography will appear in two formats - print and CD-ROM. Each of th ese formats requires a different kind of searching and thus different kinds of indexes. The use of printed indexes requires an index with te rms that uniquely identify things while computer searching with softwa re that permits the use of Boolean operators in the search strategy is better served by an index with terms representing classes that can be used alone or in combination. A more theoretical issue involves the q uestion of indexing using natural-language versus index-language terms . This latter issue is related to that of the relative merits of searc hing in a free-text mode versus searching with the aid of a controlled vocabulary. I bring these matters to the attention of librarians for two reasons.