Name Derek Austin Role Author | Died May 22, 2001 | |
Books PRECIS: A Manual of Concept Analysis and Subject Indexing | ||
Alain debray derek austin flying high
Derek Austin (11 August 1921 – 22 May 2001) was a librarian and an author.
Contents
Career
From 1963 to 1967, he was a Subject Editor at the British National Bibliography. He was also a developer of innovative digital cataloguing systems and the creator of the PRECIS indexing language in 1974, which was used worldwide and for the British National Bibliography. "His aim was to create an indexing system that would liberate indexers from the constraints of 'relative significance' (main entries). ...As by-products of his indexing theories he worked out drafts that in the mid-1980s were accepted as British and International Standards for examining documents, and for establishing multilingual and monolingual thesauri". PRECIS was an example of the application of syntactical devises in indexing. It was replaced at the British National Biography by COMPASS in 1996, which was later replaced by Library of Congress Subject Headings.
After 1974, Austin was head of the Subject System Office, The British Library.
Awards
Austin was a supernumerary Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford. He was also a member of the Royal Corps of Signals from 1941-1946.