| There has been no critical examination of Catholic Subject Headings since the first edition appeared in 1942. To fill this gap a questionnaire was mailed to all Catholic college and university libraries to ascertain the extent of present and past use of CSH, methods of use, and reasons for discontinuing. Present CSH users were also asked to indicate any difficulties they encounter in using CSH. The questionnaire also sought information on several characteristics of the libraries such as number of cataloged volumes. Response rate was 81.6%. Major findings include the following: of the 191 respondents, 37 are CSH users, 58 are former users, and 96 have never used CSH; the characteristics of the libraries do not vary widely among the three groups; 95% of the CSH users also use LCSH; there has been a steady decline in the use of CSH over the last three decades; the most common reasons given for discontinuing use of CSH are the acceptance of LCSH headings, the use of OCLC, the difficulty of using two lists, and the desire to simplify cataloging procedures.;In view of the frequently expressed need for some Catholic subject headings, current findings regarding subject searches, and the heavy dependence on LCSH, it is recommended that CSH be systematically restructured as a thesaurus in which differences from LCSH are minimized.;CSH was also compared to LCSH. Of the 3010 headings in the fifth modified edition of CSH, 1798, or 59.7%, are either identical to headings in the ninth edition of LCSH or differ only through the addition of an LCSH standard subdivision. The remaining 1212 headings, or 40.3%, are unique to CSH. Form differences account for 17.4% of the variations from LCSH, specificity differences for 36.7%, and terminology differences for 13.9%. The remaining 32.1% are entries for CSH headings which have no near equivalents in LCSH. Of the last group, 69.7% are proper nouns. |
