Minnie Earl Sears
| Minnie Earl Sears | |
|---|---|
| Born |
November 17, 1873 Lafayette, Indiana |
| Died | November 28, 1933 (aged 60) New York, New York |
| Occupation | Librarian |
Minnie Earl Sears (17 November 1873 – 28 November 1933) formulated the Sears Subject Headings, a simplification of the Library of Congress Subject Headings. In 1999, American Libraries named her one of the "100 Most Important Leaders We Had in the 20th Century".
Sears was a native of Lafayette, Indiana, and was awarded a B.Sc. from Purdue University at age 18, the youngest graduate in her class. She received an M.Sc in 1893. In 1900 the University of Illinois awarded to her a Bachelor of Library Science degree.
Sears had a long career as a cataloguer and bibliographer at a variety of libraries (Bryn Mawr College, University of Minnesota, New York Public Library), before she joined the publishing company H. W. Wilson Company in 1923 to publish her List of Subject Headings for Small Libraries. The book provides a list of subject headings for small libraries to use in lieu of Library of Congress Subject Headings. Library of Congress headings are often not as useful for small libraries because they are too detailed. Sears’ List of Subject Headings also offers small libraries guidance on how to create their own new subject headings consistently when necessary.
In order to create her subject headings, Sears consulted small and medium-sized libraries throughout the country to discern patterns of usage. She then developed her own system, based in part on the Library of Congress Subject Headings, but with a simplified subject vocabulary. In Sears’ system, common terms are much preferred over scientific and technical terms. Her system also allowed individual libraries the authority to create their own subject headings. The Sears model is not meant to serve as a standardized bridge for union catalogs, but rather as a model “for the creation of headings as needed”.
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