Subject cataloguing and indexing in university libraries: a verbal-protocol comparative study

Abstract

The differences in the subject cataloguing and indexing of books and doctoral theses carried out by university librarians were analyzed. Using the qualitative data collection methodology called Individual Verbal Protocol (PVI), five subjects (2 catalogers, 2 indexers and 1 cataloger-indexer) were studied from three public university libraries of the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. It was verified that the professionals perform the indexing of theses in the databases at a higher level of specificity than the cataloging of library materials for the online catalog. It seems that this differential attitude of the professionals is directly related to the conception of document analysis that they acquired during their university education and to the indexing policy of the system where they act, specially with the different controlled vocabularies used in the information retrieval systems.