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Catalogers, geo-science faculty members, and graduate students from several Rocky Mountain Region institutions were surveyed. The catalogers were asked about their provision of subject access through geologic or geographic names, while faculty and students were consulted about their use of such access points. Strategies for providing optimal access are explored, balancing the needs of users for vernacular or variant forms of names and the sometimes conflicting needs of the cataloging community for adherence to protocols governing the construction and tagging of "correct" forms.
In the December 31, 1909, issue of Science, the secretary of the Geological Society of Washington summed up the dismal state of stratigraphic nomenclature with the declaration, "The present incubus of names is something to be shaken off at the earliest moment."1 While this problem may be less onerous for stratigraphers these days, it continues to be a concern for contemporary librarians and patrons working with geological and geographic name subject terms in library catalogs. While wrestling with the incubus on the home front, we realized we needed more details on what problems exist for catalogers and patrons, how the problems arise, and what we can do about them.
There is much evidence that, in general, subject searching in library catalogs leaves much to be desired and yet is one of the most frequent, if not the most common, methods of gaining access to library collections. In their review of technical services research during 1987, Geraldene Walker and Judith Hudson find that "early studies of card catalog use led to the theory that subject access was of relatively little value to users, but more recent studies of online catalogs revealed a radical change."2 With online catalogs, retrieval of specific information is made even more complicated due to peculiarities of individual systems and the vastly increased number of access points. Research has shown that nearly half of online catalog subject searches retrieve nothing-Judith Adams condemns this as "an appalling state of affairs."3 Lois Mai Chan acknowledges that "online catalog use studies bear witness to the fact that our subject access arrangements fall far short of fulfilling the potential of the online catalog. Improvement is needed-urgently needed-in the light of how fast the MARC database is growing."4
That subject access is increasingly of...