subject heading

noun

The name of a category in which a bibliographical record is included.

Meanings

nounsubject heading (plural subject headings)

plural subject headings

  1. computingThe name of a category in which a bibliographical record is included.

    A drama student interested in the avant-garde "Living Theatre" group of the 1960s found that the right subject heading to use in the Humanities Index is "Experimental theatre."

    1998, Thomas Mann, The Oxford Guide to Library Research
    1 more example

    Kings of England, for instance, is a good subject heading because the preposition can be omitted only with difficulty and lead to statements that some patron of the library will delight in telling the librarian are untrue. English Kings, for instance, would be false so far as James I is concerned, because he was Scottish, and George I, because he was German.

    1986, Jay Elwood Daily, Organizing Nonprint Materials
Cite this entry
APA

subject heading. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/subject%20heading

MLA

“subject heading.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/subject%20heading. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “subject heading,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/subject%20heading.

Source: subject heading on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.