Page 95 - DLIS103_LIBRARY_CLASSIFICATION_AND_CATALOGUING_THEORY

Library Classification and Cataloguing Theory

Notes headings may be required. The United States National Library of Medicine developed Medical
Subject Headings (MeSH) to use on its many health science databases and collection. Many university
libraries may not apply both LCSH and MeSH headings to items.

Notes In Canada, the National Library of Canada worked with LCSH representatives to
create a complementary set of Canadian Subject Headings (CSH) to access and express the
topic content of documents on Canada and Canadian topics.

13.4.1 LCSH Policy Issues

Historically, issues have revolved around the terms employed to describe racial or ethnic groups.
Notable has been the terms used to describe African-Americans. Until the 1990s, the LCSH
administrators had a strict policy of not changing terms for a subject category. This was enforced
to tighten and eliminate the duplication or confusion that might arise if subject headings were
changed.

Did u know? One term to describe African-American topics in LCSH was 'Afro-American'
long after that term lost currency and acceptance in the population. LCSH
decided to allow some alteration of terms in 1996 to better reflect the needs
and access of library users.
Nevertheless, many common terms, or 'natural language' terms are not used in LCSH, and
may in effect limit the ability for users to locate items. There is a growing tradition of
research in Library and Information Science faculties about the cultural and gender biases
that affect the terms used in LCSH, which in turn may limit or deprive library users access
to information stored and disseminated in collections. A notable American Library Science
scholar on this subject is Sanford Berman.

13.4.2 Data Access

The Subject Headings are published in large red volumes (currently five), which are typically
displayed in the reference sections of research libraries. They may also be searched online in the
Library of Congress Classification Web, a subscription service, or free of charge (as individual
records) at Library of Congress Authorities. The Library of Congress issues weekly updates. The
data is published for a fee by the Cataloguing Distribution Service.
A web service, LCSH.INFO, was set up by Ed Summers, a Library of Congress employee, circa
April 2008, using SKOS to allow for simple browsing of the subject headings. LCSH. Info was shut
down by the Library of Congress's order on December 18, 2008. This announcement was met with
great dismay from the library science and semantic web communities, e.g. Tim Berners-Lee and
Tim Spalding of LibraryThing. After some delay, the Library did set up its own web service for
LCSH browsing at id.loc.gov in April 2009.

13.4.3 Using LCSH

Once a library user has found the right subject heading(s), they are an excellent resource for
finding relevant material in your library catalogue. Increasingly the use of hyperlinked, web-
based Online Public Access Catalogues, or OPACs, allow users to hyperlink to a list of similar
items displayed by LCSH once one item of interest is located. However, because LCSH are not

90 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY