Library of CongressSubject Headings

(LCSH)

Maura Walsh

Adeleine Whitman

Jessica Wilson

Tania Wisotzke

Erin Wolfe

Library of Congress (LC)• De facto National

Library• Began as

Legislative Library in 1800

• Collections totaling more than 100 million items

• Librarian of Congress appointed by President (now James H. Billington)

• Serves as:– research library

for Congress – US copyright

center– Library for all

three branches of government

– Largest public library

– Materials in over 450 languages

LC Jefferson Building

History of LCSHTimeline

• 1897 – LC moves to new Thomas Jefferson Building

• 1898 – LC introduces dictionary catalog; first subject headings from ALA list

• 1902 – LC begins Card Distribution Service

LCSH Timeline• 1909 to 1914 – LC publishes Subject

Headings Used in the Dictionary Catalogues of the Library of Congress

• 1975 – 8th edition (2 volumes) published under title Library of Congress Headings

LCSH Timeline

• 1992 – Subject Authority Control Program (SACO) established

• 1998 – LCSH’s 100th Anniversary http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9808/lcsh-cel.html

• 2007 – 30th edition of LCSH published; 5 volumes contain over 280,000 subject headings

LCSH - The Big Red Books

What is the LCSH?

Controlled vocabularyaccess points to bibliographic records

standardized records for libraries and databases

the most widely used subject access system in the world

What is the LCSH? (cont)

A tool to facilitate finding similar items

Concise, precise, and specificAnswers the question:

“What is this item about?”

A stairway in the Great Hall of the Library of Congress, Thomas Jefferson Building

Who and Why?

• Libraries– standardization

• Catalogers and Indexers– Categorization of materials

• Researchers– all materials on a topic (BT, NT, UF)

• Patrons– way to search (cross-referencing)

LCSH Construction

Provides three relational directions between terms (thesaurus format):

Equivalence (USE/UF)

Hierarchical (BT, NT)

Associative (RT, SA)

LCSH Construction (cont)

Main headingtopical

form or genre

namespersonal, corporate, geographic

LCSH Construction (cont)

Subdivisionstopical

form or document type

chronological

geographical

LCSH Construction (cont)

Free-floating subdivisions

Pattern headings

LCSH Construction (cont)

Syntax and form can vary greatly

Highly ordered and precise, but...User vs. consistency principles

Stability principle

Inside the Library

Issues

• Difficult to locate information

• No natural-language searches

• No browsing

• Slow to add/change headings

• Adaptability/Flexibility

• Bias reflected in headings

LCSH Bias

● Cutter's Rules

● Literary Warrant

● National and international reinforcement of U.S. Status quo

● Gender/Culture/…

Library of Congress Reading Room

LCSH as Thesaurus

● Definition of thesaurus● a list of words or group of words that can be used

as subject headings or descriptors in a particular database, catalog, or index. …

● Controversy over hierarchy● …

LCSH across languages

LCSH Across Languages

● LCSH becoming internationalized

● Positive implications-global access-multilingual access

● Negative implications-English centric-Underrepresentation-SHs lacking equivilancy

LCSH in Online CatalogsProgress

Adeleine, can you fill this in?

Future of LCSH?

• Possibilities– Social collaboration– Tagging/folksonomies (PennTags)– Combination LCSH– Wiki use in libraries (Ohio U. library)– Natural language processing– Ontologies– Faceted Navigation