If you’ve spent any time browsing the collections in Nebraska Memories, you have probably noticed that each item has a list of terms next to the word Subject. These are called subject headings, which is librarian-speak for words that tell you what a particular item is about. They are similar to tags that you might use to describe things on social networking sites, like pictures on
Flickr. The difference is that while you can use whatever tags you want, subject headings are chosen from a specific list of words.
Why do we add subject headings to the Nebraska Memories records, and how can they help you search? For one thing, they bring together all of the items that have the same subject heading, so that you can find pictures of the same things. This is especially important in cases where different words might be used to describe the same thing. For
example, the title of
this photograph uses the word “automobile”, while the title of
this photograph uses the word “car”. However, both of them have the same subject heading – “Automobiles.” Now that
you know this, you can click on that subject headings to find all of the items relating to cars in that particular collection. if you want to find all of the images of cars in all the Nebraska Memories collections, you can go to the
search page and type Automobiles in the subject field. This will help you find all the items in Nebraska Memories that show pictures of cars, or relate to cars in some way. If you know what word was used to describe them, you can be sure that you are not missing out on any car-related items.
There’s another added bonus to subject headings; they can help you narrow your search when the same word is used to mean two different things. For example, if you happened upon
this photograph of William Jennings Bryan in a room used as a library, you might decide that you want to look for other rooms used as libraries. If you go to the search page and search for “Libraries” in the subject field, you will get
a lot of results, including library
buildings and bookmobiles, in addition to the rooms used as libraries you were looking for. If you look closely at your original picture, you will see that it was assigned the subject heading “Libraries (Rooms & spaces).” This differentiates it from items with the subject heading “Libraries”, which is used for whole buildings that function as libraries. Doing a subject search for Libraries (Rooms & spaces) brings up a much more manageable
list of results, targeted to the exact thing you’re looking for.
The next time you are looking at Nebraska Memories, remember subject headings and how they can take your search to the next level.
Visit
Nebraska Memories to search for or browse through many more historical images digitized from photographs, negatives, postcards, maps, lantern slides, books and other materials.
Nebraska Memories is a cooperative project to digitize Nebraska-related historical and cultural heritage materials and make them available to researchers of all ages via the Internet. Nebraska Memories is brought to you by the Nebraska Library Commission. If your institution is interested in participating in Nebraska Memories, see
http://nlc.nebraska.gov/nebraskamemories/participation.aspx for more information, or contact
Beth Goble, Historical Services Librarian, or
Devra Dragos, Technology & Access Services Director.
