Library of Congress Subject Headings

We now need to look at the way information is organized in a subject heading list. For this course, we will be looking at the Library of Congress Subject Headings. This subject heading list was developed by the Library of Congress and is intended for larger libraries with fairly comprehensive collections. Many smaller libraries or school libraries have used the Sears List of Subject Headings in the past. It is designed so that it frequently uses layman’s or common terms in describing things, and is more simply organized and is contained in one volume. The Library of Congress list is much more detailed and tends to use more complex terminology in describing subjects. It takes up 5 very large volumes, and provides more ways of listing topics that are interrelated. The reason the Library of Congress list is being used for this course is that many libraries are downloading or purchasing their cataloging, and most of the cataloging available online or for purchase uses the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) when creating the records.  For this reason many smaller libraries have moved to LCSH for their in-house cataloging as well.

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