Electronic access to fiction

Pages41-44
Date01 January 1997
Published date01 January 1997
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/eb040625
AuthorAndrew MacEwan
Subject MatterInformation & knowledge management
Electronic access to
fiction
by Andrew MacEwan, Project Manager,
LCSH Development Project, The British
Library
If library users are expected to reserve, renew,
issue and return books without the intervention
of library
staff,
they must surely be expected to
select the items themselves as well. Andrew
MacEwan describes how a new fiction
indexing initiative by the British Library will
offer subject-based access to fiction, to allow
users to use subject matter as the basis of
choice in the same way as non-fiction.
The possibility of remote access to library cata-
logues through the Internet provides grounds for
re-examining some of the traditions of access on
which those catalogues are based. One deeply
rooted tradition is the distinction in terms of access
that is almost universally made between fiction and
non-fiction.
In most libraries a catalogue only provides access
to works of fiction by author and by title. On this
traditional model catalogues provide little informa-
tion on the kind of fiction which the library holds,
nor will they lead you to works of fiction dealing
with particular themes or subject matter. This
situation is in sharp contrast to access to
non-fiction where classification and indexing
systems are used to guide the reader to works on
particular subjects. Subject access systems are one
of the crucial means by which readers are empow-
ered to make choices from the non-fiction
collection.
There is already plenty of evidence that the tradi-
tional access provided by the catalogue is failing to
meet a need for subject-based access to fiction
within the walls of the library
itself.
Libraries use
other means to promote access to their fiction
collections. For instance, the most popular genres
of fiction are usually shelved separately from
general fiction, with labels such as 'romance' or
'thrillers' providing a basic form of classification.
Literature promotions too are often subject ori-
ented, with the librarian acting as an intermediary
between the user and the collection by putting
together special displays of literature on topical
themes. In such methods of promotion there is a
basic assumption that knowing what a work of
fiction is about will provide a reason for choosing
to read it. It follows that for fiction, as for
non-fiction, subject access through the catalogue
has the potential to be a basic instrument of choice.
Enhanced access through the
British National Bibliography
A new fiction indexing initiative by the British
Library is seeking to redress this imbalance be-
tween the level of access provided for fiction and
non-fiction in library catalogues. From January
1997,
British National Bibliography (BNB) cata-
logue records for works of fiction will be indexed
using the Library of Congress Subject Headings
(LCSH), in conjunction with a range of genre and
form headings derived from the American Library
Association's Guidelines on Subject Access to
Individual Works of Fiction, Drama, etc.,
(GSAFD). The Guidelines recommend indexing
fiction to provide for four kinds of subject access:
access by form/genre into which a work falls;
access for characters or groups of characters;
access for setting; and access for topic. This
method of indexing has already become
well-established through the work of the OCLC/
LC Fiction Project, whereby LC records for fiction
are upgraded with this level of access by a coop-
erative group of US Public and Academic libraries.
Informed choice
The four kinds of access provided by the GSAFD
approach to indexing fiction can perhaps be better
defined as two types: access by genre and access
by subject. Access by genre deals with the custom-
ary verbal labels that we attach to books to
categorise them into broad types. It answers
familiar questions: Do you have any good histori-
cal novels? Where do you keep the romances?
Topical access will answer more specific ques-
tions:
Do you have any novels about the Crimean
War? Do you have any novels set in Venice?
Where works of fiction have been indexed accord-
ing to the GSAFD, both kinds of questions can be
answered remotely through interrogation of the
catalogue.
Access by genre
It would be an over-simplification to state that
subject access could be provided for fiction by
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