Library of Congress Classification

[1] The classification was developed by James Hanson (chief of the Catalog Department), with assistance from Charles Martel, in 1897, while they were working at the Library of Congress.

[2] It was designed specifically for the purposes and collection of the Library of Congress to replace the fixed location system developed by Thomas Jefferson.

LCC has been criticized for lacking a sound theoretical basis; many of the classification decisions were driven by the practical needs of that library rather than epistemological considerations.

The central core of the modern Library of Congress was formed from books sold to the government by Thomas Jefferson after the original collection was razed by the British in the War of 1812.

[4] John Russell Young, the seventh Librarian of Congress, hired James Hanson and Charles Martel in 1897,[5] who began the development of a new classification system that would more accurately describe the collections the library held.

Young's tenure as Librarian ended with his death in 1899, and his successor, Herbert Putnam, continued to implement the updates to the catalog through his long stay in the office.

The full LCC schedules contain tables that describe Cutter numbers for certain types of media, collections of work, and geographical areas.

"[1] LCC should not be confused with Library of Congress Control Numbers (LCCN), which are assigned to all books (and authors) and defines online catalog entries.

However, updating various schedules with classification biases is generally assumed to be impractical due to the massive workload that would result in,[4] especially as the "discipline" based classes of LCC have been entrenched in the average library user's mind.

[17] Like all classification systems, LCC struggles with catering to interdisciplinary scholars and topics, as ultimately, a book can only be shelved in a single location.