“Garbage” In, “Refuse and Refuse Disposal” Out

Abstract

Subject access in the OPAC, as discussed in this article, is predicated on two different kinds of searching: subject (authority, alphabetic, or controlled vocabulary searching) or keyword (uncontrolled, free text, natural language vocabulary). The literature has focused on demonstrating that both approaches are needed, but very few authors address the need to integrate keyword into authority searching. The article discusses this difference and compares, with a query on the term “garbage,” search results in two online catalogs, one that performs keyword searches through the authority file and one where only bibliographic records are included in keyword searches.