LC Classification Tables

Just as fair warning: this blog entry is probably only interesting to catalogers. And maybe not even every one of them, but I really need to process my emotions about the Library of Congress Classification today.

I’m sure that all catalogers have had this happen to them: you’re assigning a call number using the Library of Congress classification, no big deal, flipping through (or scrolling through) the call numbers, you come to what you want and then BAM! “see Table XYZ.”

That’s usually when I say under my breath “Please shoot me now.”

I am not a fan of the tables in the LC classification.

Now, it’s not that the tables are hard, per se, when you get the hang of them. It’s that they are all different, and they are used in strange ways, and when you’re cataloging a lot of different kinds of materials, you don’t use the same tables over and over again. Therefore you don’t ever gain a lot of facility with any of the tables, and they are always slightly terrifying.

If you are not a person who is familiar with the tables, but have still read this far:  there are lots of tables. There are tables for assigning cutter numbers to a translation, tables for fiction, tables for art, and even internal tables for every schedule, interspersed throughout the scheme. They are little matrices for making a complex call number even more complex and unique.

I’m not against the tables; they actually serve a very important function which is to make space within the classification scheme for all the various materials that might be cataloged and classified using it. But they’re really confusing and they make me feel stupid every time I have to dive into one. I don’t know if there is a solution to the problem of the tables, and I don’t know that I would want to be the one to fix it, anyway.  But I really wish that learning the tables didn’t require 20 minutes of internet searching and re-learning every time I need to use one, either.

Alternative subject classifications

So I was cataloging a book on the theory of integral equations (don’t all great stories start this way?), and I had to read the introduction because I love books about math, and the editor mentioned the Mathematics Subject Classification (MSC) (developed by the American Mathematical Society).

The what now?

So I obviously Googled it. And not only did it lead me to a fascinating system of subject classification for mathematics, it also led me to a sister-classification scheme put out by the ACM, the Computing ClassificationSystem (CCM), and to the Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme (PACS) (released by the American Institute of Physics).

Now, all of these were developed at different times. The PACS was not developed until 1975, but the CCS was released in 1964. It’s unclear, from just a cursory search through the internet, when the MSC was developed, but someone wrote “It’s been around almost as long as the AMS.” The AMS was begun in 1888, so that would be a LONG time.

So what do they do? Well, fair reader, they are used to classify academic papers so that poor researchers can make heads or tails of what the author wants their work to relate to. I personally think this is genius. Let the author tell you what their work is about! There is only one primary subject class allowed per paper (for the MSC, I don’t know about the others), but there may be several secondary subjects assigned if the author feels that it is pertinent.

I cannot believe I’ve never heard of these systems before, but I am thoroughly fascinated. The whole idea behind allowing, or even *requiring* the author to classify their own research is such a good one. I used to do that, when I was an original cataloger and was doing original cataloging for professors at the university. I would just email them, tell them what I was doing, and ask if they had any special requests for the subjects of their books. First, it generated a ton of good will from the faculty, but it also helped me, because we had a lot of philosophy faculty and no matter how good of a cataloger you are, it's hard to figure out what they're talking about sometimes. 

Anyway, these schemes are something interesting and useful and different.