An exciting collection of Nordic noir or a rich literary critical review of the genre’s international advance by storm over the last decade? Never, perhaps, has the difference between these two expressions been as distinct as under the first week of vacation in the hammock.

Being able to clearly express and distinguish the subject of a work – what it is about – from its genre and form – what it is – is an important part of the information in a catalogue item.

Previously, genre and form made up part of the subject description and was expressed in subject headings, but after a review of Swedish subject headings in 2012, it was decided that Sweden would follow international tendencies and express genre and form with its own vocabulary separate from subject headings; compare the Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms for Library and Archival Materials (LCGFT), which is its own thesaurus for genre and form terms.

Different types of material

No distinction is made between genre and form, where several of the terms describe expressions for both concepts – for example, the term ‘Horror movies’. The Swedish list of genre and form terms is called SAOGF (Svenska ämnesord genre och form) and is designed and maintained by the Swedish Subject Heading Editorial Staff at the National Library.

The SAOGF list contains terms that describe several different types of material – everything from general terms to terms for fiction, periodicals, film, music, and computer games.

List without hierachies 

So far, the SAOGF list is a ‘flat’ list – it has no hierarchies or relations between the terms on it – but the ambition is to transform cthe list into a thesaurus through following the development of LCGFT and the applicable standard for thesauri (ISO 25964).

In the autumn of 2014, several LCGFT subprojects will be published – general terms, fiction terms, terms for music and religion – and Svenska ämnesord will then have the chance to adapt the SAOGF list according to these.

A user’s day

The National Library is arranging a users’ day for genre/form on November 13. Here everyone who is interested in the work on genre/form will have the opportunity to take part in the continued development of the SAOGF list. For more information on genre/form terms, see the Svenska ämnesord pages at www.kb.se or contact the Svenska ämnesord editorial staff at amnesord AT kb.se