Library of Congress Classification
Library of Congress Classification
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The Library of Congress Classification (LCC) is a classification system that was first developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries to organize and arrange the book collections of the Library of Congress. Over the course of the twentieth century, the system was adopted
for use by other libraries as well, especially large academic libraries in the United States. It is currently 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 these alphabetical
classes are further divided into more specific subclasses, identified by two-letter, or occasionally three-letter, combinations. For example, class N,
Arti>, has subclasses NA, Architecturei>; NB, Sculpturei>, ND, Paintingi>; as well as several other subclasses. Each subclass includes a loosely hierarchical
arrangement of the topics pertinent to the subclass, going from the general to the more specific. Individual topics are often broken down by specific
places, time periods, or bibliographic forms (such as periodicals, biographies, etc.). Each topic (often referred to as a caption) is assigned a single
number or a span of numbers. Whole numbers used in LCC may range from one to four digits in length, and may 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 of the alphabet with a numeral , e.g. .B72 or .K535. Relationships among topics in LCC are shown not by the numbers that are assigned to
them, but by indenting subtopics under the larger topics that they are a part of, much like an outline. In this respect, it is different from
more strictly hierarchical classification systems, such as the Dewey Decimal Classificationi>, where hierarchical relationships among topics are
shown by numbers that can be continuously subdivided.
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