Subject Indexing

Subject Cataloging, Subject Indexing in Legal Information Retrieval

The following is a basic concept of Subject Cataloging, Subject Indexing in relation to information retrieval. In addition to this, Subject Cataloging, Subject Indexing may be applied to legal texts, including case law, legislation and scholarly works. Whereas descriptive cataloging and descriptive indexing focus on the surface features of texts and documents, subject cataloging and subject indexing focus on analysis, description and indexing of the content, purpose or meaning of messages, in other words, the topics or subjects of messages and texts. The description of certain non-topical features of messages, texts and documents is frequently included in subject cataloging and indexing as well. Examples include special audiences (books for children), special formats (poetry, fiction, dictionaries, periodicals, statistics), special aspects or approaches (history, case studies), special media (film, video recordings, audio recordings, world-wide web), etc. The goal is to identify and provide access to all important topics and features. The challenge, of course, is figuring out what is, or will be, important for future users!

Subject Indexing in Legal Information Retrieval

The following is a basic concept of Subject Indexing in relation to information retrieval. In addition to this, Subject Indexing may be applied to legal texts, including case law, legislation and scholarly works. See subject cataloging.