subject heading

English

Noun

subject heading (plural subject headings)

1. (information science) The name of a category in which a bibliographical record is included.
   • 1986, Jay Elwood Daily, Organizing Nonprint Materials‎^[1]:

     Kings of England, for instance, is a good subject heading because the preposition can be omitted only with difficulty and lead to statements that some patron of the library will delight in telling the librarian are untrue. English Kings, for instance, would be false so far as James I is concerned, because he was Scottish, and George I, because he was German.

   • 1998, Thomas Mann, The Oxford Guide to Library Research‎^[2]:

     A drama student interested in the avant-garde "Living Theatre" group of the 1960s found that the right subject heading to use in the Humanities Index is "Experimental theatre."

See also

• index term
• descriptor
• subject term
• authorized term