Subject

Definition

Topic of the resource

Instructions

Subject refers to the topic (or the “aboutness”) of the resource. Subjects may be things, concepts, events, persons, or organizations. Limit subjects to the most relevant terms that apply to the overall content of the resource.

Prefer a controlled vocabulary such as the general terms in FAST (https://fast.oclc.org/searchfast/) and/or in a more domain-specific thesaurus such as the Art and Architecture Thesaurus (https://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/aat/) or Agrovoc (https://agrovoc.fao.org/browse/agrovoc/en/).

Use the Thesaurus for Graphic Materials (https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/tgm/) for visual materials.

Prefer proper name forms as found in the LC name authority file (https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names.html) for entities that the described resource treats as subjects.

Do not use this element for geographic aspects of the content; use Geographic location instead.