Providing Subject Access: The Use and Value of Thesauri to Librarians of Wellington Accountancy and Finance Sector Libraries

Abstract

The present study investigates the use and value of thesauri to librarians of Wellington accountancy and finance sector libraries, by exploring the extent existing thesauri are used for cataloguing, the extent approaches to cataloguing are derived from existing tools and the extent natural language is used for cataloguing. Eleven participants from eight libraries were recruited for interviews by phone. Data was collected from face to face semi-structured interviews with an interview schedule of 14 open-ended questions. Interviews took place over a one-month-period, in the month of April 2008. Findings demonstrate that use of thesauri is high, as seven out of eight libraries use an existing thesaurus to add subject-headings to records. One thesaurus did not provide necessary coverage for the library collection in five out of eight libraries. All libraries use natural language elements in their library catalogues. In summary, both thesauri and natural language elements are of use and value to the libraries interviewed, as adding natural language terms alongside the subject headings in records means that keyword searching enables searches to draw on the subject headings as keywords.