Doing Research at the Library of Congress
IIA. Three Basic Principles of Library of Congress Subject Headings
a. Uniform heading
The first principle in the construction of the LCSH list is
that of uniform heading, which addresses the problem of synonyms,
variant phrases, and
different language terms for the same concept. Librarians who create a
catalog using this system choose, wherever possible, one term for the
subject
at hand from the many possible keywords, and then group all relevant
material under that one category term (Cuba--History--Invasion, 1961 in
the above example) rather than filing the same works under each of several
different
terms scattered throughout the alphabet. Since the full list of relevant
books appears under only one of the many possible terms referring to it,
the catalogers insert cross-references in the alphabet at the positions
of several of the other possible words, in order to steer researchers to the
one
main grouping.
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