Library and Information Science

With the introduction of newly developed ideas and techniques to library world and information units, not a few comments and discussions have appeared in professional publications. Among those, problems related to subject classification and indexing are of prime importance for information storage and retrieval in major fields of knowledge, yet at the same time have caused some confusion in terminology and concepts. In Part I, the author tried to clarify the idea of a few basic terms in comparison with similar terms, such as subject, class, category, facet, aspect, etc., and to summarize important points in the usage of the terms. In Part II, an attempt was made to examine the contents of discussions on subject treatment having appeared lately in Japanese publications sometimes referring to those published in other parts of the world. In this part definitions and usage of terms discussed are checked against those defined by others, and classification and indexing operation are critically studied on both theoretical and practical basis.