Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) Maura Walsh Adeleine Whitman Jessica Wilson Tania Wisotzke Erin Wolfe
May 18, 2015
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