Domain analysis, literary warrant, and consensus: The case of fiction studies

This article reports research that used descriptor subfields in MLA Bibliography online to quantify literary warrant in the domain of scholary work about fiction (i.e., “fiction studies”). The research used Hulme's concept of literary warrant and Kernan's description of the interactive processes of literature and literary scholarship to justify quantifying existing subject indexing in existing bibliographic records as a first step in the domain analysis of a field. It was found that certain of the MLA Bibliography online's descriptor subfields and certain of the descriptor terms within those subfields occurred more often than would occur by chance. The techniques used in the research might be extended to domain analysis of other fields. Use of the methodology might improve the ability to evaluate existing and to design future subject access systems. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.