As Master of Library and Information Science candidates, you are familiar with the term "Library of Congress Subject Headings - LCSH." In the age of Google, have you ever wondered whether the LCSHs will ever become obsolete? Aren't keywords a faster way to search for information, and just as good (if not better)?

First, let us review what we already know about subject headings:

• Subject headings are created by catalogers at the Library of Congress and added to online catalog records.
• They are not the same thing as keywords.
• They ae standardized so that all works on a particulare subject are grouped together.
• They are controlled to eliminate synonyms, variant phrases, and foreign language terms.

The addition of subject headings to bibliographic records by catalogers helps researchers notice and retrieve books on the same subjects, no matter how great the variation in their titles.

Subject headings accomplish this by mapping out relationships in the catalog that researchers would not otherwise know existed or know to expect.

Without subject headings, scholars could not do in-depth scholarly research.