The aim of this thesis is to study the phenomenon of read/write OPAC by looking at how students at Pennsylvania University use PennTags in order to influence document descriptions in the library catalogue. The main questions to be answered are to what extent PennTags is being used in different subject areas and what users contribute to document descriptions through tagging in different subject areas. Studying the posts created by a sample of PennTags users from a quantitative approach I try to find out if there is reason to believe that the activity of users and users’ possibility to make meaningful contributions are dependent of the subject matter being dealt with in documents described, as anticipated by the theory of pace layering. I find that user interest in influencing the library catalogue through PennTags appears to be low in general, with exception for in the subject areas of the main classes Language and literature and Social sciences in Library of Congress Classification. Users do however make meaningful contributions to the document descriptions through tagging in 59 % of the cases. The results support only vague evidence of the connection anticipated by the theory of pace layering and I suggest that other explanatory models must be sought in order to understand user behaviour in systems like PennTags. / Uppsatsnivå: D

This Master’s thesis is a comparative study of information retrieval results between three distinct search strategies in simulated automatic query expansion in a bibliographic database. Our purpose is to investigate which of the search strategies score the most effective precision and to what extent the same relevant documents are retrieved (overlapped). A thesaurus attached to the database is used to select appropriate descriptors for the baseline query formulations which subsequently are expanded with hierarchical relations. The search strategies are s1: A baseline query with two or three descriptors, s2: The baseline descriptors combined with at least one Narrower Term, s3: The baseline descriptors combined with Narrower Term and at least one Broader Term. A Document Cutoff Value of 15 is used and only the 15 highest ranked documents are judged by relevancy. The measurements used are precision for effectiveness and Jaccard’s index for overlap. In terms of precision, results reveal that s1 scores the highest value (average 84,8 %) with s2 and s3 in decreasing order (average 81,94 % and 61,41 % respectively). The overlap varies greatly depending on topic and the average is between s1 and s2 78,81 %, between s2 and s3 58,48 % and between s3 and s1 40,41 %. In short, average precision decreases as well as average overlap. The use of thesaurus in the applied strategy of automatic query expansion is not recommended in this specific database, if the aim is to increase precision. However, in single searches with the structure like s1 the thesaurus can be of assistance in the selection of specific search terms. / Uppsatsnivå: D

To discover areas within the Swedish indexing system for children’s and youth literature that could limit the possibility to find books about a certain subject or of a particular type, and to identify factors that could complicate the development of Swedish subject headings and the genre/form system for children is the aim with this study. The research area is explored by analyzing information about the indexing process of books for children and youths in Sweden today, and information about the development of the specific indexing system. Specialist librarians connected to Svenska barnboksinstitutet have contributed to the empirical data and Mai’s domain-centered approach to indexing is used as a theoretical framework. Some areas within the indexing system that could have a negative impact on the quality and consistency of the indexing and thus reduce the searchability are shown. Using Lancaster’s suggestions about what could effect the indexing quality it is discussed that the indexing vocabulary, the document, the indexer and the “process” could contribute to the problems. Another finding that could cause inconsistency is the occurrence of subdomains within the nationwide domain. Factors that could complicate the development of the indexing system are also identified. These factors can be linked to historical and contemporary, cultural, linguistic and societal aspects, but also to the specific target group. The findings indicate that maintaining a system with updated, neutral indexing terms adapted to the needs of the target group requires a continuous and coordinated work, responsiveness, awareness of societal change, and linguistic sensitivity

The purpose of this Master’s thesis is to contribute to knowledge of what author-assigned keywords add to the indexing of Swedish dissertations in literature. This study had two research questions: 1) What types of keywords do the authors choose? 2) How do the author-assigned keywords compare to the cataloger-assigned subject headings from the controlled vocabulary Svenska Ämnesord (SAO) regarding types of terms, exhaustivity and specificity? Theoretical perspectives for this study come from Domain analysis which is a core paradigm within the research area Knowledge Organization (see e.g. Smiraglia 2015). Within Domain analysis the focus for indexing is the domain, and it is the needs of the domain that shall direct the indexing practice. The dataset of the study contained 34 dissertations in literature published in the Swedish university repository DiVA between 2012 and 2022, that had both author-assigned keywords in Swedish and were assigned sao-subject headings in the Swedish national catalogue Libris. In total 431 author keywords and 195 sao-subject headings were analysed using a modified version of thematic analysis as described by Braun & Clark (2006). The results reveal that the author-assigned keywords show more themes than the subject headings, and indicates higher exhaustivity and specificity. For example, one main theme for the keywords were discipline-related terms, that were often connected to theory/methodology for the dissertations, but the subject headings were lacking this as a main theme. Also names of philosophers and theorists formed a theme for the keywords, but the subject headings did not have this theme. Furthermore the findings show that the subject headings tended to be more general in character than the keywords. From the point of view of Domain analysis it is problematic if the indexing used in the university library databases does not meet the needs of the academic domains. Therefore it is argued in this thesis that either the author-assigned keywords should be better utilised within the national catalogue Libris, or that the policy for professional indexing should be adjusted to better meet the needs of the academic domains.