Library Of Congress Cataloging System Analysis

The Library of Congress Cataloging System (LCCS) has long reflected the importance of author’s voice in works of literature by including subheadings such as: Hispanic Americans—fiction; American poetry--Jewish authors; American lesbians--literary collections, etc., while scholarly works of nonfiction, assumed to be impartial, have not been classified in this manner. Therefore, it is not possible to measure who the authors of those works are, and whether, for instance, any of the works located under a particular subject heading were written from non-hegemonic perspectives. Any suggestion that libraries should target the collecting of works by underrepresented authors is immediately countered with criticism that in doing so librarians would be …show more content…
One of the reasons given for the codes being discontinued was due to their erratic and inconsistent use by librarians. The primary reason the codes were discontinued, however, was because items from the library’s vendor approval plans, which formed the bulk of their purchasing, were not coded, and therefore were not counted in any assessments (Ciszek & Young, 2010, p. 157). Introduced to library managers as a means of outsourcing the labor-intensive process of selecting and cataloging library materials, vendor approval plans were one of the earliest efforts by publishers to wrest control of local library collection decisions. Although some librarians initially argued against handing over to commercial interests the professional activity of book selection, fearing that vendors focused on money-making would leave damaging gaps in library collections, discounts, passed on from vendors able to buy from publishers in volume, allowed libraries to stretch budgets, and helped convince many library managers (Nardini, 2003, p. 133). Efficiencies gained from outsourcing the labor intensive process of cataloging library materials via approval plans allowed libraries to reallocate staff to other duties as vendors began to offer physical processing as well, and approval plan books could be delivered fully shelf-ready. For many libraries, approval plans are the primary means for the collection of monographs, and for large corporately owned academic booksellers, approval plans account for most business and are the centerpiece of operations, sales, marketing, and systems development. As a consequence, the library profession’s acceptance of approval plans has had the effect of homogenizing and standardizing