Subject heading lists constitute the foundation of subject cataloguing. Study describes and compares the Web General Slovenian Subject Heading List (SSSG) and the COBISS.SI General Subject Heading List (SGC). An analysis of their structure, subject cataloguing rules and 500 subject headings was conducted between March and May 2026. The subject headings were examined with regard to semantic categories, grammatical number, structural complexity, qualifiers, scope notes, semantic relationships, the occurrence of classification, and presence in bibliographic records. The results show that most subject headings are in singular, qualifiers are used to clarify concepts, relationships with broader terms are the most common, and SSSG subject headings occur more frequently in bibliographic records. The use of subject heading lists in 98,848 bibliographic records edited between September and December 2025 was analyzed. The findings indicate that freely assigned subject headings are the most common. Among the controlled vocabularies, subject headings from SSSG are used more frequently. Terminological principles in freely assigned subject headings relating to theses and to genre of literary works were taken into account. For theses we recommend the consistent use of the terms »diploma work«, »master's thesis«, and »doctoral dissertation«. For literary works, we recommend the use of the general term »literature« and discourage the use of the terms »story« and »narrative«. We also recommend the simplification of multi-word expressions.
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