b'A History of the Sears ListMinnie Earl Sears prepared the first edition of this work in response to demands for a list of subjectheadings that was better suited to the needs of the small library than the existing American LibraryAssociation and Library of Congress lists. Published in 1923, the List of Subject Headings for SmallLibraries was based on the headings used by nine small libraries that were known to be wellcataloged. Minnie Sears used only See and refer from references in the first edition. In the secondedition (1926) she added See also references at the request of teachers of cataloging who were usingthe List as a textbook. To make the List more useful for that purpose, she wrote a chapter onPractical Suggestions for the Beginner in Subject Heading Work for the third edition (1933).Isabel Stevenson Monro edited the fourth (1939) and fifth (1944) editions. A new feature of thefourth edition was the inclusion of Dewey Decimal Classification numbers as applied in theStandard Catalog for Public Libraries. The new subjects added to the List were based on those usedin the Standard Catalog Series and on the catalog cards issued by the H.W. Wilson Company.Consequently, the original subtitle Compiled from Lists used in Nine Representative SmallLibraries was dropped.The sixth (1950), seventh (1954), and eighth (1959) editions were prepared by Bertha M. Frick. Inrecognition of the pioneering and fundamental contribution made by Minnie Sears the title waschanged to Sears List of Subject Headings with the sixth edition. Since the List was being used bymedium-sized libraries as well as small ones, the phrase for Small Libraries was deleted from thetitle. The symbols x and xx were substituted for the Refer from (see ref.) and Refer from (seealso ref.) phrases to conform to the format adopted by the Library of Congress.The ninth edition (1965), the first of four to be prepared by Barbara M. Westby, continued thepolicies of the earlier editions. With the eleventh edition, the Practical Suggestions for theBeginner in Subject Heading Work was retitled Principles of The Sears List of Subject Headingsto emphasize principles, and a section dealing with nonbook materials was added.The thirteenth edition (1986), prepared by Carmen Rovira and Caroline Reyes, was the first to takeadvantage of computer validation capabilities. It also responded to the changing theory in subjectanalysis occasioned by the development of online public access catalogs. This effort was takenfurther in the fourteenth edition (1991) under the editorship of Martha T. Mooney, who reduced thenumber of compound terms, simplified many subdivisions, and advanced the work of uninvertinginverted headings.In accord with a suggestion of the Cataloging of Childrens Materials Committee of the AmericanLibrary Association, many of the headings from Subject Headings for Childrens Literature (Libraryof Congress) were incorporated into the thirteenth edition of Sears List. Since the Sears List isintended for both adult and juvenile collections, wherever the Library of Congress has two differentheadings for adult and juvenile approaches to a single subject, a choice of a single term was madefor Sears. In cases where the Sears List uses the adult form, the cataloger of childrens materialsmay prefer to use the juvenile form found in Subject Headings for Childrens Literature.In the fifteenth edition (1994), the first edited by Joseph Miller, the interval between publication ofeditions was shortened to provide a more timely updating of subject headings. In keeping withA-11'