Standardizing Subject Term Assignment for a Library Personalization System

Abstract

The Central Library of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur is engaged in developing a single window seamless access system for personalizing electronic contents to its faculty and researchers. Since a computer-based retrieval system requires carefully selected search terms to selectively separate useful and relevant information from the large collection of information available in a specific branch of knowledge and most of the electronic systems use technical terms in vogue in the concerned field, sticking to these standard terms while conducting the search helps to avoid the noise and irrelevant retrievals. Since thesaurus and other subject heading lists are very exhaustive and are not very much required in a research area description context, we look for alternative sources, but standard and authentic to create standard subject terms for use with the personalization system. As part of the system, we are devising a subsystem for assigning standardized terms for selecting and incorporating subject specializations of researchers. For example, with the aid of subject terms gathered from the specializations of the 34 Special Interest Groups of ACM and the research areas, courses and projects of faculty members in the relevant departments, we tried to arrive at standardized representation of subject terms for researchers in Computer and allied disciplines and those having computer related specializations in other branches. A similar attempt is being made to extend the subject specializations of researchers in Physics with the exhaustive list of terms provided in the Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme. This paper will briefly illustrate some personalization projects in USA and UK, contents identified for personalization in the Institute, standardization of Computer Science terms and a partial list for terms generated for Physics along with some of the challenges and benefits.