Subject index of Modern Greece's Historical Bibliography

In the 1960's KEINE launched the project "Historical Bibliography of Modern Greece", which aimed at indexing every publication concerning modern Greek political and cultural history during the 19th and 20th centuries.

This bibliographical work consisted of two type of indexes:

1. Basic index comprising the bibliographical data of the publication

2. Subject indexes, where the content of the publication is indexed

This second type of index include:

a. A chronological index

b. An index of names (personal names, placenames, things)

c. Subject or thematic index  

The specifications of these indexing system are laid out in the detailed Regulations of the Historical Bibliography of Modern Greece (ΚΕΙΝΕ, Α.Π. 2107/25-7-1980). The subject index is considered of particular importance. The structure of this index, as well as that of the geographical and chronological indexes, is radically different from the structure of the Standard list of authorities of the National Library of Greece. KEINE’s indexes have a tree form, constructed from the General subjects to the more Specific ones. For more details, consult the type-written Regulations of the Historical Bibliography of Modern Greece. More specifically, the subject index consists of General subjects (for example Industry, Law, Education), Specific subjects ( for example Agriculture – education, Law – prisons) and Separated entries, i.e. entries  that would look strange if included in a General subject or that should go under more than one subjects. In this way, the General subject index and the tree of subordinate subjects were defined. They were based on these general principles and semantic – conceptual categorizations, whose origin is not explicitly mentioned in the Regulations. The elaboration of the index began in the mid – 60’s and consequently reflects the conceptual classifications of that period, referring mostly to public administration, politics and economics. It consists of 30 General subjects:

General
Industry

Bibliography
Commerce

Statistics
Transportation

Society
Economics

Religion
Projects (public and private sector)

Political Systems                           
Labor

Administration
Social Welfare

Law
Health

Security
Education

Defence
Science

Army
Art

Navy
Literature

Air Force
Tourism

Foreing Affairs
Irredentism

Agriculture
Emigrants

 Under these General subjects we may find, in many cases, certain Specific subjects, the so – called Repeated subjects:

General
Legislation

Various
Administration

Bibliography
Programming

Journals
Accounts (reports)

Biographies
Economy

Statistics
Education

Research                                        
 

 We thus have an index of controlled terms used by KEINE, which is much more specialized than the Standard list of authorities by the national Library.

The historical bibliography project was suspended in the 1990's. However, the subject index remains a useful tool for research and documentation. By way of caution, we need to remind users that this index has a clear chronological and ideological mark. It is not only a research tool, but also a product of its time. It bears the seal of the academic historiography of the post- war Greece and of the ideological profile of its authors. Therefore, a constant revision is necessary. In the beginning of the 2010's the subject index of the Historical Bibliography of Modern Greece has been transcribed in demotic Greek in a DB Access database and is now available as a pdf archive in KEINE's website.