Essential Library Of Congress Subject Headings

Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) are increasingly seen as 'the' English language controlled vocabulary, despite their lack of a theoretical foundation, and their evident US bias. In mapping exercises between national subject heading lists, and in exercises in digital resource organization and management, LCSH are often chosen because of the lack of any other widely accepted English language standard for subject cataloguing. It is therefore important that the basic nature of LCSH, their advantages, and their limitations, are well understood both by LIS practitioners and those in the wider information community. Information professionals who attended library school before 1995 - and many more recent library school graduates - are unlikely to have had a formal introduction to Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). Paraprofessionals who undertake cataloguing are similarly unlikely to have enjoyed an induction to the broad principles of LCSH. This is the first compact guide to LCSH written from a UK viewpoint. Key topics include: • background and history of LCSH • subject heading lists • structure and display in LCSH • form of entry • application of LCSH • document analysis • main headings • topical, geographical and free-floating sub-divisions • building compound headings • name headings • headings for literature, art, music, history and law • LCSH in the online environment. Readership: There is a strong emphasis throughout on worked examples and practical exercises in the application of the scheme, and a full glossary of terms is supplied. No prior knowledge or experience of subject cataloguing is assumed. This is an indispensable guide to LCSH for practitioners and students alike.

Presents suggested headings appropriate for use in the catalogs of small and medium-sized libraries, and provides patterns and instructions for adding new headings as they are required. The seventeenth edition features a revision of headings for the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere, as well as many new subdivisions.

Classification is a crucial skill for all information workers involved in organizing collections. This new edition offers fully revised and updated guidance on how to go about classifying a document from scratch. Essential Classification leads the novice classifier step by step through the basics of subject cataloguing, with an emphasis on practical document analysis and classification. It deals with fundamental questions of the purpose of classification in different situations, and the needs and expectations of end users. The reader is introduced to the ways in which document content can be assessed, and how this can best be expressed for translation into the language of specific indexing and classification systems. Fully updated to reflect changes to the major general schemes (Library of Congress, LCSH, Dewey and UDC) since the first edition, and with new chapters on working with informal classification, from folksonomies to tagging and social media, this new edition will set cataloguers on the right path. Key areas covered are: - The need for classification - The variety of classification - The structure of classification - Working with informal classification - Management aspects of classification - Classification in digital space. This guide is essential reading for library school students, novice cataloguers and all information workers who need to classify but have not formally been taught how. It also offers practical guidance to computer scientists, internet and intranet managers, and all others concerned with the design and maintenance of subject tools.

This resource attempts to describe the principles that underlie the structure of the Library of Congress subject headings system and the policies that govern the assignment of subject headings to LC MARC records.