Page 40 - Cataloging and Classification for Library Technicians, 2nd Edition

24 Cataloging and Classification for Library Technicians
portant clas sification systems employed in the United States are the
Dewey Dec i mal Clas si fi ca tion and the Li brary of Con gress Clas si fi -
cation systems. Most small and me dium-sized public li braries and
virtually all school me dia cen ters choose to use the Dewey Dec imal
Clas si fi ca tion sys tem.
The Dewey Dec i mal Clas si fi ca tion and Rel a tive In dex is pub lished in
two edi tions, full and abridged. The latest full edi tion is DDC 21, pub -
lished in 1996 by OCLC/Forest Press. In the pub lisher’s fore word, it is
stated that li braries with a small col lection of up to 20,000 vol umes that
do not an ticipate sig nificant col lection growth may choose the Abridged
Edi tion 13. The DDC is kept up to date be tween edi tions through the
monthly post ing of new and changed en tries on the Dewey home page
<www.oclc.org>, and through the annual pub lication of Dewey Dec i mal
Clas si fi ca tion Ad di tions, Notes and De ci sions (DCand).
An elec tronic ver sion of DDC 21, ti tled Dewey for Win dows, is avail-
able on CD-ROM from its pub lisher, the OCLC/For est Press.
A more thor ough dis cus sion of the Dewey Dec i mal Clas si fi ca tion
system can be found in Chap ter 6 of this text.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
CLASSIFICATION SCHEDULES, A TO Z

For li brar ies not us ing the Dewey Dec i mal Clas si fi ca tion sys-
tem—mainly the larger public li braries, special li braries, and ac a-
demic libraries—the Library of Congress Clas sification system is the
choice. The con tents of this sys tem are pub lished as a set of alphabet-
ized, coded pa perbacks called class sched ules. Cur rently, the sys tem
includes forty-six vol umes al together. Each class sched ule is pub -
lished and re vised in dependently at different times. For ex ample, the
latest re vision for Sched ule A was pub lished in 1998, whereas Sched -
ule G was last pub lished in 1976.
The Li brary of Con gress pub lishes LC Clas si fi ca tion—Ad di tions
and Changes four times a year to keep catalogers up to date. Both
newly added and changed num bers are listed in this pub lication.
Some com mercial com panies pub lish class schedules with a few
years of LC Clas si fi ca tion—Ad di tions and Changes in cor po rated
into the main class schedules for the convenience of the cat alogers.
Gale Re search Com pany also pro duces a CD-ROM ver sion of the