Search for Subtitles and Captions

Recently, I was forwarded a question from one of our borrowers asking how to search for subtitled and captioned DVDs in English. This is a good question but one I had never thought of before. After a little bit of searching, I discovered that there is a Library of Congress subject heading labeled Video Recordings for the Hearing Impaired. While this isn't a complete list of all appropriate videos, it is a good start.

However, if you click on the Video Recordings for the Hearing Impaired subject heading, you see that this retrieves both DVD and VHS formats. To get only DVD results, we can use the catalog's Advanced Search page.

• Once on the Advanced Search page, click the drop down arrow by Title Keyword and change it to Subject Keyword
• Type "hearing impaired" in the box next to it. Make sure to include quotes because we want this exact phrase
• Scroll down under the Format limit box and select Video Recording - DVD (Hint: select multiple format options by holding down the ctrl key while you click all the desired formats)
• Click the Red Arrow to start your search

Unfortunately, this is a large enough result set that the catalog cannot sort it. In this case, the best option is probably to narrow the search further by entering additional title, author, or subject keywords or by using additional limits. For instance, we could refine our search by selecting New DVDs using the New limit box.

At the moment, I'm exploring if there's another way to make this information available. Those of you who have taken cataloging may remember that 041 $j is suppose to contain subtitle and caption information. However, there are a couple of problems that need to be addressed if/when we decide to go this route. For now, the subject keyword search is our best option.