The Library of Congress Classification (LCC) is a system of library classification developed by the Library of Congress in the United States, which can be used for shelving books in a library. LCC is mainly used by large research and academic libraries. LCC was developed in 1897 by James Hanson (chief of the Catalog Department), with assistance from Charles Martel while they were working at the Library of Congress. It was designed specifically for the purposes and collection of the Library of Congress, to replace the fixed location system developed by Thomas Jefferson.

LCC has been criticized for lacking a sound theoretical basis; many of the classification decisions were driven by the practical needs of that library rather than epistemological considerations. Although it divides subjects into broad categories, it is essentially enumerative in nature. That is, it provides a guide to the books actually in one library's collections, not a classification of the world.

History

The central core of the modern Library of Congress was formed from books sold to the government by Thomas Jefferson after the original collection was burned by the British in the War of 1812. As a result, the original classification system used by the library was of Jefferson's invention. However, by the end of the nineteenth century, the collection had grown to over a million volumes and his system was deemed too unwieldy.

John Russell Young, the seventh Librarian of Congress, hired James Hanson and Charles Martel in 1897, who began the development of a new classification system that would more accurately describe the collections the library held. Young's tenure as Librarian ended with his death in 1899, and his successor, Herbert Putnam, continued to implement the updates to the catalog through his long stay in the office. By the time he departed from his post in 1939, all the classes except K (Law) were well developed. and the Putnam Classification System (developed while Putnam was head librarian at the Minneapolis Public Library). The one closest to their needs was Cutter's; however, he died before the completion of his system. Hanson and Martel thus decided to develop their own unique system, strongly based on his ideas. They published their first outline of the classification scheme in 1904. With these sub-classes, numerical ranges are assigned to topics, going from more general to more specific. Unlike in the Dewey Decimal Classification, where the numbers assigned to a topic iterate throughout the system (e.g., the ".05" tag indicated a periodical publication on the topic), the LCC numerical ranges are strictly hierarchal, only corresponding to their level on the outline. LCC is enumerative, meaning that it lists all the classes in officially published schedules, which are updated as needed by the Library of Congress. Library collections can add modifiers to distinguish specific volumes, such as "Copy 1."

LCC should not be confused with Library of Congress Control Numbers (LCCN), which are assigned to all books (and authors) and defines online catalog entries. Another is the Canadian Universities and the Canadian National Library using FC for Canadian History, a subclass that LCC has not officially adopted, but which it has agreed not to use for anything else.

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Systems of classification can be evaluated on several metrics, including expressiveness (the ability of the numeration system to express the hierarchal and correlative relationships between topics), hospitality (the ability of the system to accommodate new subjects), and brevity (length of call numbers). it does make it more unwieldy for large or specialized collections. On the other hand, Hanson and Martel designed LCC specifically for library use, which means while it does not completely enumerate the world, it does more reflect what books a library might hold.

Like all classification systems, LCC struggles with catering to interdisciplinary scholars and topics, as ultimately, a book can only be shelved in a single location.

References

  • "Library of Congress classification outline", LOC
  • "Library of Congress Classification PDF Files", LOC
  • "Classification", LOC
  • "Cataloging Distribution Services" – Library of Congress
  • "Classification outline", LOC
  • How to read LCC call numbers, geography.about.com (via The Wayback Machine)
  • How to use LCC to organize a home library, zackgrossbart.com

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