FAST Subject Element Help

Definition

Subject terms or phrases representing the primary topic(s) on which a work is focused.¹

Faceted Application of Subject Terminology (FAST) is a controlled vocabulary with origins in the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) authority records. FAST breaks the longer related LCSH terms into individual terms in an attempt to create a set of subject terms which are easier to apply and use. ³

Currently the FAST authority file contains over 1,600,000 authority records. The FAST database is available at http://fast.oclc.org.

FAST subject terms are still asssigned to a major category of terms (similar to other subjects) which includes Genre, Geographic, Occupational, Temporal, and Topical.

Form Element

The online form element appears as below:

This form element allows quicks entry by a user of a single FAST term and assign the term type ( i.e., Genre, Geographic, Occupational, Temporal, or Topical). The authority of FAST is automatically applied to the subject term.

Other form elements for entering these subject information includes Full Subject and Subject / Scheme Metadata Entry.

Best Practices

The best practice for entering ...

Examples

The following are examples of well formatted :...

Sources

1. MODS User Guidelines Version 3, Detailed Description of MODS Elements
2. MARC 21 Format for Bibliographic Data
3. FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology) at OCLC