RBU_JR_LIS_V23_2021-FULL_TEXT-E-Copy

suggestions from general public are also welcome (The
Library of Congress, n.d.). One significant milestone
achieved by LOC in 1984 when it published Subject
Cataloging Manual: Subject Headings for the first time
and the latest updated 5 th edition was unveiled in 2008
with the title Subject Headings Manual (The Library of
Congress, 2014). The manual not only guides the
cataloguing staff of LOC regarding procedures and
practices but also provides substantive explanations and
understanding of subject cataloguing policy. The Subject
Headings Manual (SHM) defines literary warrant in its
instruction on establishment of a new topical subject
heading as follows:
Establish a subject heading for a topic that
represents a discrete, identifiable concept when it
is first encountered in a work being cataloged,
rather than after several works on the topic have
been published and catalogued (The Library of
Congress, 2013; Olson, 2000).
When establishing a new heading for which no consensus
has been developed among authorities in a particular field,
the SHM advocates conducting authority research as
follows:
Proposed subject headings and their associated
“used for” references should reflect both the
terminology used in current literature on the
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topic in question, and the system of language,
construction, and style used in Library of
Congress Subject Headings (The Library of
Congress, 2020).
This would be followed by “intuitive judgment based on
available evidence (in some cases only the work being
cataloged) by selecting elements that will allow the
heading to express what is intended and at the same time
serve as a retrieval term in the system” (The Library of
Congress, 2013). Thus , “the topics that are represented in
LCSH on the basis of literary warrant are more or less the
topics that are represented in published materials received
and catalogued by the Library of Congress” (Olson, 2000,
p.57).
ANSI/NISO Z39.19
Z39.19, one of the most influential national standards ever
developed for the library and information field, deals with
the structure, construction, and use of thesauri. The first
edition of this standard was prepared by Subcommittee 25
on Thesaurus Rules and Conventions of the American
National Standards Committee Z39 on Standardization in
the Field of Library Work, Documentation, and Related
Publishing Practices and was published in 1974. The
standard was revised by Madeline Henderson and a new
edition was released in 1980. The 3 rd revision was
undertaken under the leadership of Dr. Bella Haas
Weinberg and a significantly expanded standard, taking
into account variations in approach, was released in 1993
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RBU Journal of library & Information Science, V. 23, 2021
with the title Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and
Management of Monolingual Thesauri (Crawford, 1991).
During those days printed documents such as journal
articles, technical reports, newspaper articles, etc. were the
mainstream information resources and accordingly display
methods were described. With the emergence of new
information storage and retrieval systems in electronic
environment and increased population of non-traditional
documents such as patents, chemical structures, maps,
music, videos, museum artifacts, and many other types of
materials, the inadequacy of the standard to deal with
rapidly evolving electronic environment was felt by review
committee. As a preparatory stage for new revision, NISO
organized a national Workshop on Electronic Thesauri,
held on November 4–5, 1999, to investigate the
desirability and feasibility of developing a standard for
electronic thesauri. The workshop identified a number of
weak points of 1993 edition such as unfriendly to nonlexicographers,
limited to post-coordinate retrieval,
confined to document indexing applications, limited to
printed products and recommended revision to include
different types of controlled vocabularies, extension to
cover neodocuments, inclusion of web application,
inclusion of interoperability among controlled
vocabularies, etc. (Fayen, 2007). 4 th edition came into
being in 2005 with the title Guidelines for the
Construction, Format, and Management of Monolingual
Controlled Vocabularies and this was followed by 2010
reaffirmation (NISO, 2010).
Z39.19 recognises literary warrant as the main tool for
vocabulary selection along with user warrant and
organisational warrant. This standard defines literary
warrant as “Justification for the representation of a concept
in an indexing language or for the selection of a preferred
term because of its frequent occurrence in the literature”
(National Information Standards Organization, 1993, p.36;
National Information Standards Organization, 2005, p.6).
1993 revision of Z39.19 recommended literary warrant as
the guiding principle for selection of a descriptor and
preferred form of a descriptor as follows:
Words and phrases drawn from the literature of
the field should determine the formulation of
descriptors. When two or more variants have
literary warrant, the most frequently used term
should be selected as the descriptor (National
Information Standards Organization, 1993, p.7).
The fourth revision added two more warrants namely user
warrant and organisational warrant with the existing
literary warrant for selection of terms (National
Information Standards Organization, 2005, p.16). But no
clear indication was given as to how to use the three
warrants to select terms—in combination or
indiscriminately.
Also, except in case of literary warrant, “terms whose
meanings overlap in general usage, and homographs, i.e.,
terms with identical spellings but different meanings,