You are invited to attend the Core Faceted Subject Access Interest Group's webinar during the American Library Association's Core Interest Group Week.
Day: Tuesday, March 3, 2026
Time: 2:00 - 3:00 pm Eastern / 1:00 - 2:00 pm Central / 12:00 - 1:00 pm Mountain / 11:00 am - 12:00 pm Pacific
Registration Link (for entire Core Interest Group Week): https://events.zoom.us/ev/AiMtpXBpLKs6ohw9czqPxzwhSMgU22fywu-WSnPPrdCy4Tg4e8Jd~AooVRdqfHc-sNsACj8aZ_44aKVJyjyWIbNsn3KjDcw88y0ft3wFxAhlC7w
Cost: Free for everyone (both ALA members and non-ALA members)
Event webpage: https://www.ala.org/core/interest-group-week
Presentation 1: Break my LCSH into pieces: This is a user-friendly subject sort
Presenters: Rebecca Saunders, Kellen Carpenter
Southern Appalachian Digital Collections (SADC), a regional digital collections platform, began a large-scale vocabulary remediation project when the platform launched in 2022. Contributing institutions' legacy metadata used pre-coordinated, subdivided subject terms extensively. Going live with this structure, we quickly encountered usability problems with our highlighted search filters, and a lot of material spread into numerous and narrow silos. The existing structure limited the value of subject terms from users and implicitly discouraged our users from making any use of subject terms. This presentation will build on a 2024 FSAIG submission that shared our experiences with transferring geographic and form subdivisions to other relevant metadata elements and will share our methods for the more nuanced task of converting topical subdivisions. We will demonstrate how this process improves the search experience for our users and illustrate, with examples, the increased discoverability of our materials. Attendees will leave with ideas for tackling their own pre-coordinated subject conversion process and a clear sense of the benefits of undertaking such a large-scale project, which include keeping subject indexing relevant and usable in modern web-based environments.
Presentation 2: Creating order from chaos: aligning terms and facilitating connections with FAST headings and tools
Presenter: Rebecca Ammerman
A few months into my role as a Metadata Management & Outreach Librarian, I was asked to develop a plan to create order from the chaotic mix of Library of Congress and local subject headings in our digital collections. Specifically, could I synchronize our current subject terms using Faceted Application of Subject Terminology (FAST)?
As I developed and worked through a pilot project assigning equivalent FAST headings to a collection of digitized book covers, I learned to use the suite of FAST tools, including searchFAST, assignFAST, and FAST converter. Moving on to collections of digitized photographs, I revised and streamlined my initial workflows. I also experimented with AI, investigating whether it was a useful tool for reconciling terms with their enumerative controlled heading identifiers, and how it fared in analyzing descriptive metadata and suggesting equivalent FAST headings.
Although still a work in progress, I am excited to share about my project and the flexibility, ease of use, and potential for faceted vocabularies, and FAST in particular, to corral and align appropriate terms and descriptions and enhance discovery of materials in special collections.
Presentation 3: Faceted Evolution: Practical Strategies for Modernizing Library Metadata
Presenters: Sai Deng, Kelley McGrath, Sarah Hovde and Aiping Chen-Gaffey, ALA Core Subject Analysis Committee (SAC) Subcommittee on Faceted Vocabularies (SSFV)
As libraries transition toward linked data, the transformation of traditional Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) into granular, interoperable facets is essential for modern discovery. The ALA Core Subject Analysis Committee (SAC) Subcommittee on Faceted Vocabularies (SSFV) is at the forefront of this shift, developing the infrastructure needed to bridge the gap between conventional authority control and the semantic web.
This session explores the SSFV's effort in supplementing complex LCSH strings with structured facets-including LC Genre/Form Terms (LCGFT), LC Demographic Group Terms (LCDGT), and geographic/chronological data-through a hybrid model that maintains record integrity while enhancing search precision. We will highlight the critical work of our task groups-Literature, Chronological Data, Module Maintenance, and LC Proposal-sharing practical strategies for mapping modules, testing with partners like OCLC, and developing scripts to automate MARC transformation. Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of how these faceted workflows can optimize metadata for both current cataloging systems and emerging linked-data environments.
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Andrea Schuba
Monographs Cataloging Librarian
University of Maryland
She/Her/Hers
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