Richard Higgins asks "whether indexing practices should change now that we =
can provide access to multilevel descriptions on line that provide more =
exhaustive subject access to researchers".. =20

This is an interesting issue for use as well, and our staff has long =
debated it.  How do  you decide which things are more important than =
others, when this seems to be a value brought to the search by the end =
user? Traditionally we have provided more general series level access.  We =
assumed that researchers would be led to series which might contain more =
specific information. So our policy was never to try to provide exhaustive =
subject access.

 New advances in systems and descriptive practice hold out the hope that =
perhaps this issue can be solved in part.  This is a good opportunity to =
reexamine past practices and to make improvements. Now we are able to =
provide better access than we could previously, with not much more effort =
put into indexing.

So, I don't think we'll change our indexing practices radically.  We'll =
just try to take advantage of the ability to provide more specific access =
from  file level finding aids.  I know some collections are not described =
in a way that this is always possible, but this seems to me to be a =
natural extension of exhisting descriptive practice.=20

Steven R. Wood