Comparisons of Aboutness of OCLC FAST Headings and IMDb “Plot Keywords” for Documentary Films

Abstract This study analyzed OCLC Faceted Application of Subject Terminology (FAST) headings and Internet Movie Database (IMDb) “plot keywords” for a shared set of documentary films to determine how well the aboutness identified by the former was reproduced by the latter. A randomized list of documentary films held at the Iowa State University Library, a large academic research library, was created. The FAST headings were compared to each “plot keyword” used in the corresponding IMDb record to determine if they met one or more of the match types defined for this study: exact match, close match, broad match, narrow match, and closely-related match. In total, 604 FAST headings from 100 OCLC records were analyzed. This data was used to calculate breakdowns of average recall and average precision evaluating the IMDb records using the OCLC records. This study found that relatively little of the aboutness expressed by FAST headings was represented by the “plot keywords” in the corresponding IMDb records. The average recall and average precision of the IMDb records, judged as an attempt to reproduce the FAST headings, was 23.38% and 18.89%, respectively. By comparing OCLC and IMDb subject metadata for documentary films, this study advances scholarship on the relationship between professionally-created and user-created metadata.