SOURCES OF INFORMATION NOTES
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CLASSIFICATION.
The library of congress classification system was first developed in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to organize and arrange
the book collections of the library of congress
The system was adopted for use by other libraries especially large
academic libraries in the United States. It is still one of the most
widely used library classification systems in the world.
The system divides all knowledge into twenty – one basic classes, each
identified by a single letter of the alphabet. Most of those
alphabetical classes are further divided into more specific subclasses,
identified by two-letter or three – letter combinations. For example,
class N (AH) has subclasses NA, architecture; NB, sculpture; ND,
painting; among other several subclasses.
Each subclass includes a loosely hierarchical arrangement of the topics
related to the subclass, going from general to more specificity.
Individual topics are often broken down to specific places, time periods
or bibliographic forms. Each topic, also referred to as a caption, is
assigned a single number or a span of numbers. Whole numbers used in
this classification may range from one to four digits in length and can
be further extended by the use of decimal numbers.
Some subtopics appear in alphabetical rather than hierarchical
lists and are represented by decimal numbers
that combine a letter with a numeral such as c 85 or J901. Relationships
among topics in the library of congress classification are now shown by
the numbers assigned to them but by indenting subtopics under the larger
topics that they are a part of. This makes it different from other more
strict hierarchical classification systems such as the Dewey decimal
classification where hierarchical relationships among topics are shown
by numbers that can be continuously subdivided.
The following are the basic
Classes of the Library of Congress Classification System.
- General works
- Philosophy – psychology religion
- Auxiliary sciences of history
- World history and history of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, New
Zealand, etc. - History of the Americas
- History of Americas
- Geography. Anthropology
Recreation - Social sciences
- Political Science
- Law
- Education
- Music and books on music
- Fine arts
- Language and literature
- Science
- Medicine
- Agriculture
- Technology
- Military Science
- Naval Science
- Bibliography. Library science. Information resources (General)
