Open access repositories are one of the best ways to ensure that your work is findable and accessible to its audience. One of the main ways you can enhance the findability of your work is to make sure that there is good, descriptive metadata attached to it. 

Metadata is “data about data.” When you search the internet, descriptive metadata such as author name, affiliation, subjects, and keywords help you find what you’re looking for and might surface an otherwise unfindable item. The more metadata you provide, the easier it is for others to find, cite, and use your work. While metadata was once done mostly by cataloging librarians and publishers, open access repositories allow users to publish their own work and provide the information to make it findable. 

Knowledge Commons Works (KC Works) uses controlled vocabularies for subjects and allows for user defined keywords. Controlled vocabularies allow for standardization of terms, which allows content to be more findable and allows you to find associated content. Below you’ll find a bit about the vocabularies we use and why they’re important. 

Subjects and Keywords

KCWorks uses FAST metadata subject headings and Homosaurus LGBTQIA+ vocabulary to help creators increase the findability of their work. We have included Homosaurus in acknowledgement of the FAST metadata’s incompleteness in this area. We will continue to look for subject heading taxonomies to augment our collection – and welcome suggestions from our members!

This might seem tricky at first due to the millions of combinations across all disciplines to choose from within both FAST and Homosaurus. When you start typing in the subjects field, the page will begin to show you the subject headings available. You can choose to narrow you options by choosing a specific grouping like “topic” or “geographic,” or choose a specific vocabularly to search in, like Homosaurus. If there are more specific terms you’d like that are not part of either controlled vocabulary, put those in the keywords field. You can pick up to ten subjects and ten keywords for each deposit.

More about FAST

FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology) is the standard for many repositories, including those hosted by libraries and museums. Adapted from the Library of Congress  Subject Headings (LCSH), it provides eight facets: chronological, corporate names, events, form/genre, geographic names, personal names, titles, and topics. These facets have millions of possible combinations but function a bit differently than our legacy subjects. Here’s a few examples:

• “Medieval Spanish History” becomes “Spain” [geographic], “History” [topical], and “Middle Ages” [topical]
• “18th-century English literature” becomes “English Literature” [topical] and “Eighteenth Century [topical]
• “Compositional improvisation” becomes “Improvisation (Music)” [topical] and “Composition (Music)” [topical]
• “Shakespeare” becomes “Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616” [personal]

[Note: While you will see the facet (topical, personal, etc.) when choosing subjects, once deposited only the subject itself will be displayed.] You can try searching for subjects and keywords using the SearchFAST website. More information about FAST can be found on the OCLC website. To narrow the number of subjects that come up on search you can select a specific facet like topic or geographic.

More About Homosaurus

The Homosaurus was developed to act as a companion set of subject headings to augment things like FAST and LCSH to expand terms around LGBTQIA+ scholarship. Originally created in 1997, it is still evolving and continues to add new terms.

You can explore the vocabulary using the tools on the site, or search for specific terms.