How would you

help?

Curious For Library of

Congress
a) A high school student more exciting Subject
comes into the library
to research a project
Library of Congress Headings
on Earth Resources Information?
Technology Satellites. • Chan, L. & Hodges, T. (2000). Entering
The student goes the Millennium: A New Century for
away with nothing. LCSH. Cataloging and Classification
Quarterly, 29 (1) 225-234 Retrieved
She does not realize
from EBSCOHost EJS database
that the material on
• Chan, L. M. (n.d.). Library of Congress
ERTS is to be found
Subject Headings Principles and
under the general Policies. Retrieved July 10, 2009, from
heading GEOGRAPHY http://www.itsmarc.com/crs/shed0014
or the technical term • Gilyard, B. (1999). Sandy Berman's
REMOTE SENSING Last Stand. City Pages, 20, 971.
By,
SYSTEMS. Retrieved from
http://www.sanfordberman.org/cityp/b Daniel Brower
er1t.htm
Breanna Gutierrez
• Hunter, E. (2002). Classification Made
Simple. 2nd Ed. Burlington, VT: Cody Manrig
b) A student searches
Ashgate publishing Catherine Reimer
the on-line catalog of
her campus library for • Library of Congress. (n.d.). Library of Lena Wolf
Congress. Retrieved July 10, 2009,
information on career
from http://www.loc.gov/
counseling for women.
Searches under
COUNSELING,
VOCATIONAL
GUIDANCE and
WOMEN--
EMPLOYMENT-UNITED
 Key Points
Every Librarian
should know
∗ LCSH is a controlled
vocabulary used for
subject indexing of the
Library of Congress,
other libraries, indexing
agencies and online
bibliographic databases. ∗ LCSH are used in many libraries,
∗ The keywords of LCSH
provide subject access
points to bibliographic
records.
∗ Commercial services such as
∗ Each subject has only
one heading, with
synonyms and variant
forms included as entry
vocabulary. This
prevents false hits and ∗ Users consult the red books with
keeps subject
information together.
∗ J.C.M. Hanson developed
the Library of Congress
Subject Heading ∗ Today LCSH are used in online
modeling Charles A.
Cutter’s Rules for a
∗ LCSH are now updated weekly
Dictionary Catalog.
∗ Room for your
thoughts:
________________________
How are
the
lcsh used?
primarily large university and
research libraries, and has
become the standard for subject
cataloging and indexing.
Wilson online and Dialog carry
databases with MARC records
providing access through LC
headings.
a keyword and are directed to
the correct subject heading that
books on the topic would be
catalogued under.
library catalogs.
on the library of congress
website as changes and new
headings are approved before
the editorial meeting.
Evaluation:
∗ Subject headings were very
rigid and unchanging until the
1990’s
∗ Once one finds a relevant
subject heading, it may be
easier to find many books on
that specific subject, however
the limited language of the
subject headings makes it
difficult to search.
∗ They are necessary for a basic
structure of organization for the
many records within, but for
usability, the Library of
Congress should look into a new
way to classify records.
Lcsh future &
The web 2.0
∗ With successful adaptation to
electronic environment, LCSH
could have future uses in
organizing virtual collections of
online material to make them
searchable.
∗ With the advances of Web 2.0
tools, LCSH have become more
of a formal establishment and
less of a research tool.
∗ The Library of Congress Working
Group on the Future of
Bibliographic Control has