LCSH and Classification Numbers

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LCSH and Classification numbers Understanding LCSH and classification numbers The Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) comprise a thesaurus of subject headings, maintained by the United States Library of Congress. LCSHs are applied to every item within a library’s collection, and facilitate a user’s access to items in the catalogue that pertain to similar subject matter. With each subject headings comes a range of alphanumeric numbers that indicate the sequence of the books on the shelves. Using LCSH and classification numbers Once you have found the right subject heading, they are an excellent resource for finding relevant material in the Library Catalogue as you are able to hyperlink to a list of similar items. However, bear in mind that many library users incorrectly assume the library has no items on the desired topic, when they chose to search by ‘subject’ field, and the terms they entered do not strictly conform to a LCSH. Tip: The easiest way to find and use LCSH is to start with a ‘keyword’ search, followed by looking at the subject headings of a relevant item to locate other related material. Once you have obtained the subject headings, remember that related items would be in the same range of classification numbers on the shelves. Soon, you would not even need to use the Library Catalogue by going straight to the particular range of classification numbers to browse!

Created by Lee Meiyu for Chinese Linguistics on 14 June 2010 All Rights Reserved. NTU Library 1


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