Library of Congress Subject Headings
Library of Congress Subject Headings
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Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) has been actively maintained since 1898 to catalog materials held at the Library of Congress. By virtue of
cooperative cataloging other libraries around the United States also use LCSH to provide subject access to their collections. In addition LCSH is used
internationally, often in translation. LCSH in this service includes all Library of Congress Subject Headings, free-floating subdivisions (topical and form),
Genre/Form headings, Children's (AC) headings, and validation strings* for which authority records have been created. The content includes a few name headings
(personal and corporate), such as William Shakespeare, Jesus Christ, and Harvard University, and geographic headings that are added to LCSH as they are needed to
establish subdivisions, provide a pattern for subdivision practice, or provide reference structure for other terms. This content is expanded beyond the print issue
of LCSH (the "red books") with inclusion of validation strings.
*Validation strings: Some authority records are for headings that have been built by adding subdivisions. These records are the result of an ongoing project to
programmatically create authority records for valid subject strings from subject heading strings found in bibliographic records. The authority records for these
subject strings were created so the entire string could be machine-validated. The strings do not have broader, narrower, or related terms.
URI(s)
Instance Of
Scheme Members
Change Notes
Alternate Formats