6.1 Users and Use
During the early stages of developing
the entity-relationship conceptual model of subject
authority records, the FRSAR Working
Group considered it essential to analyze the users
of subject authority data, to identify
the contexts in which the data is used, and to
characterize different usage scenarios.
Potential user groups include:
a) information professionals who create
and maintain subject authority data,
including cataloguers and controlled
vocabulary creators;
b) information professionals who create
and maintain metadata;
c) reference services librarians and
other information professionals who search
for information as intermediaries; and
d) end-users who search for information
to fulfil their information needs.
Intermediaries (group c) act on behalf
of end-users (group d). They interact with the
bibliographic data in a similar way as
end-users (although at a higher level of expertise).
Therefore, for the purpose of this use
analysis the intermediaries and end-users are
considered belonging to the same
end-user group.
6.2 User Tasks
When using subject authority data, a
user may need to find, identify, and select a subject
entity or entities. A user may also
choose to explore a subject domain and its terminology
as well as the relationships that exist
among the themas. In addition, the user may explore
the correlation of the nomen(s) of a
thema in one subject authority system to the
respective nomen(s) of the same thema in
another subject authority system.
Based on the results from the two user
studies conducted by the User Tasks Sub-Group,
four tasks for subject authority data
have been defined:
• Find one or more subjects and/or their
appellations, that correspond(s) to the user’s
stated criteria, using attributes and
relationships;
• Identify a subject and/or its
appellation based on their attributes or relationships (i.e.,
to distinguish between two or more
subjects or appellations with similar
characteristics and to confirm that the
appropriate subject or appellation has been
found);
• Select a subject and/or its
appellation appropriate to the user’s needs (i.e., to choose
or reject based on the user's
requirements and needs);
• Explore relationships between subjects
and/or their appellations (e.g., to explore
relationships in order to understand the
structure of a subject domain and its
terminology).
The explore user task is a new task
introduced in FRSAD; whereas the find, identify, and
select user tasks have been previously
introduced in the FRBR and/or FRAD conceptual
models. The subject authority data use
survey conducted by FRSAR's User Tasks Sub-
Group indicates that a large number of
participants (69%) use subject authority data to
explore relationships among terms during
cataloguing and metadata creation. In addition,
62% of participants use subject
authority data to explore relationships while searching for
bibliographic resources, and 64% use
these data to navigate and browse bibliographic
descriptions. These numbers reflect a
major use of subject authority data for a task that
was not present in the FRAD and FRBR
models; therefore, the group deemed it
important to add the explore user task.
見主題標目的的目的在查找、識別和選擇....
