بررسي ميزان همسويي كتابخانه ها در سازمان دهي موضوعي كتاب ها (با تاكيد بر حوزه ايرانشناسي )

A Study of Subject Cataloging Consistency among Iranian Libraries in the Area of Iranian Studies

The present study represents an attempt to compare sub. Cataloging consistency between the catalogers of National Library of Iran(NLI) on one side and 12 majors academic and special libraries located in Tehran on the other. The findings indicate that in 75% of libraries the subject inconsistency values are 60% to 85%. In terms of subject classes, the inconsistency values come 51.13% to 82.45% which mean goes to 70.6%. The number of subject headings assigned to books in the class of phlilosophy is the most and for class of generalities is the least. It means that whatever the number of assigned terms increases, the probability of consistency decrases. It confirms the Markey findings in 1984. More than 50% of subject inconsistency in libraries belong to the subject sturcture It means that after more than 18 years of access to the "List of Subject Headings", catalogers may not be adapted with that formal vocabulary control. The mean number of subject headings for each book is 1.6 which means less than 2 subjects access points are provided to retrieve a book. One may ask if titles cannot do this job, and whether this kind of subject analysis and representation is adequate for subject cataloging of books. It can be concluded that term assignments in the Iranian libraries, at least in the population of the present study, are highly inconsistent, and access points to retrieve the relevant books are very few, both of which means low precision and recall in an assumed union catalogue or network.