Library of Congress Subject Headings

The Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) comprise a thesaurus (in the information science sense, a controlled vocabulary) of subject headings, maintained by the United States Library of Congress, for use in bibliographic records. LC Subject Headings are an integral part of bibliographic control, which is the function by which libraries collect, organize and disseminate documents. It first appeared in year 1898, a year later to the publication of Library of Congress Classification(1897). The latest fortieth edition contains headings established by the Library through January 2018. On July 1, 2014 CDS ended its print publications operation. Selected publications -- including all LC classification schedules, Library of Congress Subject Headings, and Subject Cataloging Manual -- are available as PDF documents at no cost to you at http://www.loc.gov/aba/.