# Is there a universal catalog for the Library of Congress Classifications? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 1, 2010, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-universal-catalog-for-the-library-of-congress-classifications/552215 "2010-09-01T01:35:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/le_ministre_de_l_au-dela/32/12181_2.png) [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-universal-catalog-for-the-library-of-congress-classifications/552215/1 "2010-09-01T01:35:22Z")
That may not be the clearest description of what I’m after; let me describe what I’d like to be able to do and if I’m lucky, someone will tell me where this resource can be found. I would like to browse through something which is like a library catalogue, wherein every book or score ever published is listed by its Library of Congress Classification. (It doesn’t have to lead to holdings - if I know such a book exists, I can then go to other resources to track it down.) So that, if I looked for M 1613.3, I could discover the existence of every piece of vocal chamber music ever published. Once I know that there is such a piece of music as the Ottmar Schoeck ‘Notturno’, I can use other resources to look for a copy of it. But it’s hard to search for scores when you don’t know they exist… Does there exist a reference catalog like I’ve described? Please help me. ---
**Author:** ![dangermom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-universal-catalog-for-the-library-of-congress-classifications/552215/2 "2010-09-01T02:13:23Z")
Go to [www.loc.gov](http://www.loc.gov) and do a search under “call number.” [Here’s the search page.](http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&PAGE=First) ---
**Author:** ![Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/le_ministre_de_l_au-dela/32/12181_2.png) [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-universal-catalog-for-the-library-of-congress-classifications/552215/3 "2010-09-01T12:19:53Z")
Yes, that’s the catalog for the _actual Library of Congress_. It’s nice, but it doesn’t list every book published under every subject heading. For example, under M 1624 (Songs with Guitar Accompaniment), the ‘Letters from Composers’ by Argento, Domenic is missing, undoubtedly because the Library of Congress doesn’t have a copy. I’m looking for a catalog where I can browse through everything ever published by its Library of Congress Classification. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-universal-catalog-for-the-library-of-congress-classifications/552215/4 "2010-09-01T12:25:46Z")
> [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](#): > > I’m looking for a catalog where I can browse through everything ever published by its Library of Congress Classification. I think what you’re asking for doesn’t exist. Not only would the logistical problems be huge (there’s no such thing as a “catalog of everything published”), but searching by call number would return a ton of hits in such a catalog and bring the system to a halt. ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-universal-catalog-for-the-library-of-congress-classifications/552215/5 "2010-09-01T12:28:56Z")
The closest thing to a universal library catalogue is [WorldCat](http://www.worldcat.org/). However, (1) I don’t think the general public can search in that by LC Classification (LCC) – though libraries that belong to OCLC can, and (2) A large part is not classed by LCC, but by Dewey, UDC, or other classification schemes, or even not classified at all. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-universal-catalog-for-the-library-of-congress-classifications/552215/6 "2010-09-01T13:44:14Z")
Yeah, there’s no unified cataloging authority, exactly. (Even libraries that buy most of their records usually do _some_ original cataloging of local stuff or similar.) ETA - and you disappointed me. I was going to come in here and tell you all about the Big Red Books, only that wasn’t the question. ---
**Author:** ![J\_Cubed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c6cbf5/32.png) [@J\_Cubed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/J_Cubed)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-universal-catalog-for-the-library-of-congress-classifications/552215/7 "2010-09-01T15:14:30Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > > [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](#): > > > > I’m looking for a catalog where I can browse through everything ever published by its Library of Congress Classification. > > I think what you’re asking for doesn’t exist. Not only would the logistical problems be huge (there’s no such thing as a “catalog of everything published”), but searching by call number would return a ton of hits in such a catalog and bring the system to a halt. Please. We build 'em a little better than that. Although, when one small community college loaded all ~7 million LC authority records, their search performance did slow down a bit… ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-universal-catalog-for-the-library-of-congress-classifications/552215/8 "2010-09-01T15:24:26Z")
> [@J\_Cubed](#): > > > [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > > > I think what you’re asking for doesn’t exist. Not only would the logistical problems be huge (there’s no such thing as a “catalog of everything published”), but searching by call number would return a ton of hits in such a catalog and bring the system to a halt. > > Please. We build 'em a little better than that. Although, when one small community college loaded all ~7 million LC authority records, their search performance did slow down a bit… All I know is that when I search some fairly common subject in my library catalog, the system has a fit before it slowly spits out the results. ---
**Author:** ![Disgscen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f05b48/32.png) [@Disgscen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Disgscen)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-universal-catalog-for-the-library-of-congress-classifications/552215/9 "2010-09-01T19:46:31Z")
No. Most scores (and other works) can be correctly classified in several different places. Similarly, if a piece is more complicated it’ll have several subject headings to list all of the most important categories the piece falls into. Whoever created the record will then usually create just one call number. So if a piece is vocal chamber music, but it’s more importantly ‘Poetry, Modern–20th century–Musical settings’, then it’s not going to locate at M1613.3 at all. So there is no call number which will list all of the works that COULD locate there. It will only list the ones that have actually used that call number. It seems to me that you’re hoping you can use call numbers to replace subject headings. To some degree this works OK, but if you’re looking for comprehensiveness (every piece of vocal chamber music ever published), you’re going to do better with a subject search than a call number search. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-universal-catalog-for-the-library-of-congress-classifications/552215/10 "2010-09-01T20:35:57Z")
> [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](#): > > I would like to browse through something which is like a library catalogue, wherein every book or score ever published is listed by its Library of Congress Classification. (It doesn’t have to lead to holdings - if I know such a book exists, I can then go to other resources to track it down.) > > So that, if I looked for M 1613.3, I could discover the existence of every piece of vocal chamber music ever published. The problem with what you’re looking for is that many works don’t get Library of Congress (LoC) classifications and, as mentioned earlier, there are many that could be classified in more than one place, so you’d miss works that address your specified subject only obliquely. ---
**Author:** ![Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/le_ministre_de_l_au-dela/32/12181_2.png) [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2010, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-universal-catalog-for-the-library-of-congress-classifications/552215/11 "2010-09-02T00:32:07Z")
Well, first off, thank you all for some very interesting and useful links. I’m going to have lots of fun with WorldCat for the next little while. It’s too bad that something as potentially useful as this doesn’t exist. Oh, well, back to visiting the catalogs of various libraries and collating the results. **Zsofia** - I know about the Little Red Book (Chairman Mao version) and the Liberal Red Book (Jean Chretien’s policy from the 1993 Canadian election), but what are the Big Red Books? ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2010, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-universal-catalog-for-the-library-of-congress-classifications/552215/12 "2010-09-02T02:24:56Z")
The approved LC subject headings live in huge red books - I can’t remember if it’s 5 or 6 volumes. That’s just the topical subject headings, mind you, not names or other stuff. (They give you the format under Shakespeare for names, IIRC, but that’s just an example.) The subjects and a list of free-floating subject headings, like when you see “-- History” or “-- Humor” in a subject. It isn’t tombstones, it isn’t gravestones, it’s “Sepulchral monuments”. No really. ETA - I use them all the time for the local magazine indexing I do, because [authorities.loc.gov](http://authorities.loc.gov) is not very useable.