Library of Congress Subject Headings, 38e, Complete (LCSH)

Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) are increasingly seen as 'the' English language controlled vocabulary, despite their lack of a theoretical foundation, and their evident US bias. In mapping exercises between national subject heading lists, and in exercises in digital resource organization and management, LCSH are often chosen because of the lack of any other widely accepted English language standard for subject cataloguing. It is therefore important that the basic nature of LCSH, their advantages, and their limitations, are well understood both by LIS practitioners and those in the wider information community. The thirty-eighth edition of Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH 38) contains headings established by the Library through January 2016. The headings included in this list were obtained by creating a file consisting of all subject heading and subdivision records in verified status in the subject authority file at the Library of Congress. Approximately 339,813 authority records were in the file then. The subject authority database from which the headings in this edition were drawn indicates that the file contains approximately 24,156 personal name headings of which 22,985 represent family names, 9,659 corporate headings, 9 meeting or conference headings, 484 uniform titles, 241,047 topical subject headings, and 60,839 geographic subject headings. There are 770 general USE references, 4,372 general see also references, 296,784 references from one usable heading to another, and 358,083 references from unused terms to used headings. The creation and revision of subject headings is a continuous process. Approximately 5,000 new headings, including headings with subdivisions, are added to LCSH each year. Proposals for new headings and revisions to existing ones are submitted by catalogers at the Library of Congress and by participants in the Subject Authority Cooperative Program (SACO). More information on SACO may be found at . Approved proposals become part of the online authority file of subject headings at the Library