3.4.1  Subjects

Subjects or rather, subject-related tags are the only fancy device at this level:  you may enter up to three subjects/tags for any one text; the options derive from a closed list.  Another result of Bitter Experience?  In a way, yes.  It's a question of scalability.  As long as DS was relatively small, with only a few partners, and not many records, one could expect readers to one-by-one ask for various texts:  missal; breviary; gradual; antiphonal; ritual; ordo; sacramentary … and suddenly the list became long and uncertain, dependent, as it is, upon the choice of word of the inputter.  How much nicer it would be if the reader could simply request "Liturgical" and all such manuscripts would be delivered as results of his search.   In addition, a strictly Author- or Title-based entrance into a body of medieval manuscripts may not always be helpful, given the fluidity of such concepts.  How much handier it would be if the reader could simply request "Historical" or "Arithmetic."  And wouldn't a category for "Women's Studies" conveniently pull up anything a cataloguer might imagine tagging that way?  A sermon against women dancing; a list of women's names; a book of hours with prayers in the feminine form, "ego miserrima peccatrix."    Please read the Data Dictionary about Subjects.

The Subject forms have a slightly different appearance on the Add Text and the Edit Text pages.  But both allow excision (via the X to the right of the entered subject), should you change your mind.